


Stripped to the Bone

by Blueberries (Blueberries_Pen)



Category: DCU, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Amputation, Attempted Murder, Attempted Revenge Sex, Burns, Burnt Flesh, Crucifixion, Drowning, Electric shocks, Force Feeding, Gore, I wanna say branding but not quite the typical thing hm, Identity Erasure, Inappropriate cultural references, Incineration, Isolation, M/M, Multiple Suicide Attempts, Murder, Pomegranates, Public Humiliation, Rape, Rats, Self-Cannibalism, Self-Mutilation, Sensory Deprivation, Sewn lips, Slade is the artist fight him not me, Slade's art decor, Sleep Deprivation, Starvation, Suicidal Ideation, Temporary Blindness, Temporary necrophilia, Torture, Violence, Watersports, You Have Been Warned, missing bones, please do not read this if the tags disturb you, sword fucking, teeth pulling, this is terrible but I'm not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21816991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueberries_Pen/pseuds/Blueberries
Summary: -“Oh. And do try to be still, Robin. I have quite enough of your hands in my collection. Anymore and it’ll become kindling.”When Slade first gave him the serum, Robin dared to think- that with it, maybe, just maybe, he’d have a chance at fighting back. He had hope, that things would change for the better.The scalpel descends, ice cold steel meeting feverishly hot skin. Robin wishes it would melt and slide off his skin like water, but he does not hope.Robin knows better than to hope now.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson
Comments: 60
Kudos: 136





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freakedelic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freakedelic/gifts).



> I thought I left fanfiction. then I accidentally rewatched the apprentice arc. then I went on ao3 and got hit with so many awesome fics. Then freak's fics hit me like a freight train so hard I got sent flying to twitter (by which I mean I got a twitter solely to stalk them). Then my hand slipped and I wrote this. Twitter is a horrible enabler. Mostly, it's just freaks though. Everything they write is so good I just wanna cry. So anyway, I'm blaming this fic on you, freaks. It was inspired by you. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> Also, the snippets aren’t arranged in chronological order. If that’s too confusing, lemme know pls

There’s a boy, with lanky black hair that’s white at the roots, hollowed dull blue eyes peering out from sunken cheeks, skin sallow and pale and leached of color, carrying a skeleton in the dead of night with soundless steps shaded in moonlight. 

Correction. 

Not _a_ boy. 

_His_ boy.

“Down,” Slade orders, and the boy obeys, setting the skeleton down. He obediently stands after, looking attentively at Slade for further orders.

“Dig.” _Your_ grave, he doesn’t say.

He gave the boy not a shovel nor any tools to dig with, but the boy gives no word of complaint, sinking to his knees and digging out dirt with his own hands. He works silently, every breath quiet.

Slade watches, feeling something like pride curl around his heart.

“Bury it,” he orders softly when the grave is an appropriate depth. The boy doesn’t even hesitate to dump the skeleton unceremoniously in the hole. Like it means nothing to him.

“Good boy.”

The boy is silent as he works, filling up the grave with dirt he had so meticulously dug out.

“Do you want a gravestone?” Slade asks, casually.

The boy blinks once, considering. “No, master,” he says quietly, rising.

“Got nothing to say to the bones you buried?”

“It’s dead,” that same quiet, obedient voice. “There’s nothing worth saying.”

Slade steps close, and grabs the boy’s chin, tilting it up to face him. The minute way the boy relaxes under his touch wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else, but it’s as clear to him as day. The boy isn’t exactly leaning into it, simply accepting anything and everything Slade will give him - be it _kindness_ or _cruelty_. His hand slides into the boy’s hair, then wrenches it downward to make him face downwards towards the unmarked grave. The boy stumbles, but recovers quickly. 

He’s far too used to Slade manhandling him like a doll.

“Tell me, boy,” he hums. “Who did you bury?”

“...Robin.”

“And who was Robin?”

“A child. A weak, pathetic idiot who first thought they could win against you, who then thought he could simply survive against you, who thought he could manage to get out with his heart intact,” The boy says, words that he would have once raged against flowing so easily like dripping nectar from his lips.

Slade wants to consume him utterly, even like this. “And what happened to him, pet?”

“You crushed him, master.” There is not a hint of emotion in the boy’s voice, just dispassionate stating of facts. 

“Yes, I did,” Slade agrees, dragging out the words. “And what did you do?”

“I buried him.”

“Indeed.” He tugs the boy’s head back towards him, manipulating his body like a puppet. “So tell me then, boy, if the body you buried is Robin, what are _you_?”

The boy blinks up at him. “ _Yours_ , master.”

Slade smiles. He’s trained him so well. “Good boy,” he says fondly, laying a hand on the boy’s neck, just above the collar that encircles it. “You’re _mine_ , and you will be whatever I want you to be.”

“Yes, master,” the boy agrees.

Slade gently rubbed the the point where hair meets neck, enjoying the way it elicited a shiver from the boy. Such a touch-starved, needy little thing. 

All his.

“I’m going to give you a new name, boy,” Slade says. “From now on, your name is Renegade. _My_ Renegade.”

Renegade meets his gaze with wide blue eyes. “Renegade,” he repeats, tasting how the words feel on his lips. It is a name given in memoriam of everything he has betrayed, everything he will continue to betray by simply being here. It is a name given to him by his _torturer_ , the one who held him down and broke him. The one who _owns_ him, mind, body, soul. The one who so carefully picked through the shattered pieces of who he was and rearranged him and bound the broken parts with tarnished, poisoned mercury silver. 

The one who made him utterly dependant on him.

“Thank you, master,” Renegade says, and means every word.

Slade smiles. “Good boy.”

-/

_It’s strange_ , Robin thinks. He used to think that knives sliding into flesh and bone ought to make more noise, but Slade’s technique and weapons are of too good quality to be heard.

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt though. His nerves catches up with his eyes, and as the pain hits him - Robin _screams_.

He’s pinned - like a butterfly - by the blades slicing into and through his palms into the floor below. Beads of blood pool out from his twitching hands, and he tries, he really _tries_ , to keep from moving because moving means the blades jerking means more bleeding means more hurt means more moving means Slade will yank them out and stab them into Robin’s wrists _again_ and Robin _can’t_. 

“Now, pet, where were we?” Slade asks conversationally, wielding a gleamingly sharp scalpel. The handle is ashen white but new, and the sight of it makes Robin let out a half desperate noise. 

He sobs, partly because of the pain as blood drips out from his hands, partly in fear of what will come – because he knows as soon as Slade starts he won’t be able to stop _struggling_ and by the end of it his hand will be a bloody mess and –

“Oh. And _do_ try to be still, Robin. I have quite enough of your hands in my collection. Anymore and it’ll become kindling.”

When Slade first gave him the serum, Robin dared to think- that with it, maybe, just maybe, he’d have a chance at fighting back. He had _hope_ , that things would _change_ for the _better_.

The scalpel descends, ice cold steel meeting feverishly hot skin. Robin wishes it would melt and slide off his skin like water, but he does _not_ hope.

Robin knows better than to hope now.

-/

“Aren’t you worried?” Robin asks, mouth dry. He doesn’t want the serum - another thing to tie him to Slade - even if it enhances his physical capabilities. It’s not worth it - not when it will brand him so deeply that not even the best plastic surgeons will be able to erase it. He tugs restlessly at the straps binding him down to the operating table. 

“Of what?” Slade asks, pausing. The metal of the needle gleams. 

Robin swallows. “I could - it would let me hurt you.” 

Slade laughs, a fond, indulgent sound, and ruffles his hair. 

Robin flinches away from the fingers. Fingers that dare to caress him so gently when they bruised him not an hour ago. He doesn’t know that not even a week later, he will be begging for that kind of touch.

“Silly boy,” Slade chastises, “No, it will let _me_ hurt _you_.”

Robin doesn’t yet understand the meaning of those words despite the way it chills him to the bones, but. 

He will. 

Slade won’t give him a choice.

-/

His fingers and toes are bloody, leaking blood like a broken faucet. Nails pulled out without a care for his screams. Declawed. Like an unruly pet that couldn’t stop scratching up the furniture.

“‘m sorry, Master,” he gasps, fingers twitching. He doesn’t even remember what he’s apologising for. Maybe he didn’t call Slade Master, maybe he didn’t respond fast enough when Slade wanted him to obey, maybe he resisted when he should have given in, but that doesn’t matter now. He’ll do _any_ thing, _say_ anything, as long as it _stops_ . “Please,” he begs, voice already hoarse. “Please please pleaseplease _please_ . I’m _sorry_.” He won’t last if Slade tears him apart again.

Slade approaches, red stained pliers still in his hand. Robin sobs. “ _Master_.”

His pleas go unheard.

“Open your mouth, boy,” Slade says, voice hard. 

And Robin’s afraid. So afraid, shaking with fear of what will be, heart pounding at every shift of Slade’s body, but even so -

He obeys. 

Because whatever pain Slade may inflict on him now, it will be thrice as worse if Robin doesn’t listen. So despite the tears already trickling down his face, he opens his mouth and tries not to scream as Slade sets the plier and _yanks_ out his teeth, tooth after tooth.

“Maybe this will teach you not to backtalk so much, hm?” Slade muses, examining the incisior he just pulled out. “But somehow, I doubt it,” he adds in a derisive tone.

Robin’s mouth is full with the iron tang of blood, dribbling out the sides of his mouth, but - his mouth feels so _empty_. Too big a cavern for his tongue. He sobs, leaking water and blood in equal measure.

“Don’t cry, pet,” Slade says lightly, setting aside the pliers and picking up a scalpel instead. “We’re nowhere near done yet.”

Robin’s fingers spasm, pain shooting down them as he moves, scrambling for a hold, but there is only cold, unyielding steel beneath his fingers. He tries to apologise again - like that would stop Slade - but the noises he makes aren’t intelligible at all and instead resemble more the dying keens of some wild animal. _Please_... 

No amount of begging or pleading will ever change Slade’s mind, not unless it’s what he wanted in the first place, but still, Robin tries. 

A hand settles on the side of his face, and for a moment, Robin _hopes_ for mercy. Then scalpel traces the border of his lower eyelid, and he knows he will receive no such thing. Slade’s gloves must be soaked through at his point - with Robin’s blood and tears - but that doesn’t stop him as he spreads and then holds Robin’s eyelids apart. 

“Do try not to move,” Slade orders. The blade is presses against the pink flesh right below his eye, and Robin trembles. “I would hate to have to scrap out your brains.”

Robin tries for one last plea, before the scalpel digs in. He yells and screams and thrashes and screeches and begs but nothing reaches the stone cold block known as Slade.

No, the man merely straps his head in place when his struggles get too much, then continues on with carving out Robin’s eyes. 

Finger and toes press against the surface in an effort to distract the new pain with the old, but it doesn’t help. He screams and screams and screams, but Slade must be deaf because he acts like he doesn’t hear a _thing_. Like Robin is merely a tiresome task, a chore, an object for Slade to tear apart and put back together like doll parts...

When it’s done, and he hears Slade steps back, he sobs without knowing whether the wetness he feels on his cheeks is blood or tears. Whether he is even capable of tears anymore. 

All he sees is blackness. 

And it may be all he _ever_ sees, because sure, he’s grown back broken bones and muscle and fingers but. 

Slade’s still missing an eye. And he has the serum too.

So Robin’s eyes might not ever grow back. He’ll have deal with this blindness for the rest of his _life_ , for _forever_ . He’ll never see his teammates again, never see Bruce again, and he _can’t_ –

There are several clicks, and Robin falls - for a moment, for an eternity - to the ground. He doesn’t bother trying to get up, instead curling into a ball and raising a shaky hand to feel the latest wound. Bloody fingers meet bloody sockets, and he bites back another scream. Everything _hurts_ . His head is suddenly jerked up, dragging his body to a kneeling position and eliciting a sharp cry because he didn’t _see_ that, and maybe never will - his sobs intensify. 

“Open up, Robin,” Slade says, and it is so, so loud.

There’s a warmth resting against his lips, a musky scent overpowering the smell of copper and reaching his nose, and he realises - Slade intends to fuck his mouth like this. Broken and humiliated and blind and covered in blood and ruined, unable to fight back if he even wanted to, and for a moment, Robin wonders how the man can even stand to be near him, much less want to touch him. 

Every touch, every pain is magnified like this. Unable to see, every sensation hits him like a truck, and Slade’s cock is no exception. It hammers in with abandon - not that there’s any need for care considering Robin has no teeth - reaching the back of his throat easily. But even so. It feels like the first. Like Robin’s lips stretched around something too wide, choking him and burning him and filling him with acid that will melt him from inside out.

It tastes more like blood than the usual bitter taste, but Robin can’t tell which he prefers. Neither, really.

He never realised just how much he relied on sight. Every thrust seems to send him sprawling across the room, every tug on on his hair is crash landing to the earth. It makes him dizzy and overwhelmed and he can barely breathe and he’s so fucking _relieved_ when Slade doesn’t seem to mind it when he places his hands on Slade’s thighs. The world doesn’t stop spinning, but at least he has an anchor.

Bloody gums press against Slade’s hardness, and Robin can tell the man is enjoying it because he keeps makes that little grunt that he does only when he’s pleased. Grateful, Robin redoubles his efforts - if Slade is happy, maybe everything will stop. He sucks and swallows and bobs his head, puts all his effort into this because he _needs_ mercy.

“Good pet,” Slade praises, and Robin could sob with relief. “Maybe I should keep you like this all the time, hm, since it turns you into such a sweet little thing?” 

And Robin doesn’t _want_ that, but it doesn’t matter what he wants, only what Slade does, so all he does is sob and whine and press his bloody fingers against Slade and pray his pleas will reach the man.

“Declawed, defanged, _blind_ ,” Slade mocks. “You do make for a pretty sight.”

All Robin can do is moan and wail and cry around Slade, but at last that seems to enough, because Slade pulls out and –

There’s pressure against his eye socket, hitting again and again, and he _realizes_ -

Slade is -

_Slade is fucking his eye socket._

He only has a moment to come to that horrified reaction and gasp because then something warm and heavy hits his face, his mouth, and his eye socket too, and as the smell hits him, Robin numbly knows it to be come. 

Slade lets go, and Robin drips to the floor like a puppet with his strings cut. That’s all he is, nowadays. Existing only for Slade’s amusement, to be brought out and cast away as the man pleases.

Just a puppet.

-/

“Eat, Robin,” Slade orders, voice mild. 

Robin stares, wondering how a single man has the capacity to carry out such horror. Slade’s eye stares back at him, the pupil a fathomless void, a black hole that threatens to consume him if he stares too long. 

He breaks the stare, and shivers. Slade steals all the warmth from the room. 

There’s a disappointed sigh, and Robin flinches. “Don’t make me force you, Robin. Then you’ll have to clean up whatever messes you make as well.” 

Swallowing, Robin’s gaze flickers to the table. An ashen bowl, carved out of the bones of his skull. He remembers - Slade separating the layers of his scalp, layer by layer, blood in his eyes, the awful sound of his skull breaking open - he jerks his eyes to the side, and brings himself back to the present. 

But that just makes him face the cutlery. 

The knife, the fork, the spoon - they’re all bone white. Radius, ulna, fibula. Slade meticulously cut him open, through skin, fascia, fat and muscle till he carefully separated the bones, and Robin wondered why. If Slade was making use or it - or if it was just for the cruelty. Now he knew. The cup gleams, polished white and made of carved ribs carefully bound and melded together. He tries not to think of the horrible cracks each one had made as they snapped off. Tries to shove the memories of his rib cage being forced open deep into his mind.

Robin should be horrified, now, like he was then. But he’s numb. Just staring. At the fucking damned dining set Slade has made of the broken pieces of him.

A mere tool for Slade to use. 

However he wanted.

Dead. Or alive.

“Robin,” Slade says again, and the voice is hard. 

Robin raises his head and swallows thickly. This is the third time Slade has warned him - he won’t do it again. He raised a trembling hand, and grasps the spoon. It’s a soup. Just a soup. A soup made with his own marrow, his own meat separated so viciously - there are bandages on his arm which cover chunks still missing - from his bones, his own organs - he knows there’s a kidney and a good chunk of his liver there, he _saw_ Slade make it - ripped out his body, but. It’s just a soup, regardless. 

His mouth is dry.

The spoon dips into the broth, coming up again with a suspicious chunk - is it his muscle? Kidney? Meat? His breaths quicken, but his hand is shaking so much that Robin knows he will spill it if he tries to bring it closer. Instead, he’s forced to tilt him head down, eyes forced to look down into that poisonous brew. His mouth opens, and he squeezes his eyes shut as he shoves his bone into his mouth and swallows down his own meat. 

It might taste wonderful, but Robin wouldn’t know. All he can think of what he’s eating out of, of what he’s really eating, and he chokes on the ashes on his mouth as he suddenly can’t _breathe_.

His hand flies to the cup, blindly bringing it to his mouth as he swallows down a gulp of the liquid but _it’s not water_. He’s gotten too used to the everpresent smell of it, didn’t even realise the fluid in the cup was blood. He frantically slams the cup back down, and clamps his mouth shut with both hands as he forces himself to swallow.

If he throws up here, Slade will still make him finish eating _and_ clean up his own vomit with his own tongue. He’s done it before.

But it’s no use, he _will_ throw up, so he lunges to his feet, hoping to at least get the sink, but -

Slade is there in a flash, behind him, covering Robin’s mouth with his too large hand and tilting his head up. “Swallow,” he orders, and Robin has no choice, not if he doesn’t want to drown in his own vomit.

Through blurry eyes, Robin obeyed.

“That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” Slade asks, smiling maliciously. He sits down on Robin’s chair, dragging him down with him. 

Robin shifts uncomfortably on Slade’s lap, but Slade’s grip on him is vice tight. “You’re not leaving till you finish your meal, Robin,” he says, lifting the spoon to Robin’s mouth. “I don’t care how long it takes. Understood?”

Robin flinches, and held back a sob. “Understood, Master,” he answers, defeated, then opens his mouth.

What Slade wants, Slade got.

-/

_Slice_.

Robin doesn’t register what happened at first, because - surely - Slade didn’t just -

But his eyes don’t lie.

There’s yellow first - brief flash of fat before red bleeds through and soaking through his clothes - and he stumbles down to his feet, hands clinging around his stomach. 

“Slade,” Robin gasps, pressing skin together. “ _Master_.”

Dark boots approach him, and for a second he thinks they’re here to help, but in the next they kick and send him sprawling to the ground. He whines. “ _Slade, please_.” He has not yet experienced enough cruelty not to hope for mercy.

Slade steps over him, the edge of the sword still gleaming red from where it sliced him, and points it down at him. Robin doesn’t understand _why_ \- he’s already down, he’s been heavily injured, they need to get that looked at, but -

“AHHH!!!” Robin lets out an ear piercing scream as steel cold blade pierced through his the right side of his chest and pins him to the floor below. He looks at it again, disbelieving, and screams again, because that is a _sword through his chest_ and _Slade_ put it there and that is a _fatal injury_ and he _doesn’t understand why–_

“Don’t look so terrified, little bird,” Slade croons, stepping over his body. “You’re not going to _die_. You have the serum in you after all.”

Slade crouches down over him, a small scalpel in his hands.

“What-Ngghh!” Robin’s question is choked off as Slade wraps a hand around his throat. 

“I’ve never been able to quite disiclipe you properly - as breakable as you are - but now, with the serum flowing though your veins, I can finally rip your guts out like you _deserve_ ,” Slade muses, tracing the edge of the blade along the wound. 

With shame, Robin starts to feels hot tears pool at his eyes, but he’s only now beginning to realise the consequences of the serum. Slade can torture him, break every bone in his body - _and Robin with be perfectly fine the next day_. 

The scalpel tears through his skin, widening the initial wound the sword had made all the way to the bottom of his belly- his abdomen and chest more red than white now - and hands dig into the opening. 

Robin feels a tug, a squeeze, and his tears finally spill as he sees his very intestines being dragged out of his body. He give muffled protests, despite the grasp Slade has on his throat. Hands reach reflexively for the constricting appendage, and - he takes a breath and chokes, because - god, that is the white of his _bones_ . Slade just broke his hand _clean through_. He screams again, sobbing, tears dripping down to mix with blood. He grasps his broken limb with his one good hand, agony racing down his hand up his brain.

He cracks and breaks because he _can’t_ \- that shiny yellow speckled pink thing in Slade’s hand is _his_ – he feels bile crawl up his throat as he turns his head and vomits - but he doesn’t understand how that’s even possible when so much of his is out _there_.

“M’sorry,” he begs. “Mas...ter...Sorry... please...” 

Slade doesn’t even deign to look at his face. He just keeps on pulling out Robin’s abdominal contents, keeps on unmaking Robin without a second glance.

Robin cries. 

He doesn’t know what he’s done that Slade is hurting him so much - but nothing is _working_. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he rasps our, when his voice can’t shout anymore.

Slade pauses, actually looks at him. “What I want,” he says, Robin feels _hope_ . Slade will tell him what to do, he can do it and be forgiven and this will all stop and – “Is for you too _shut up_ and take your damned _punishment_.” Robin feels himself crash, feels tears leak out like a never ending faucet, and he’s not even allowed to wallow in despair –

Slade rips one end off with a squelch, splatting blood and other fluids across Robin’s skin.

Robin heard a loud, shattered scream, like the dying cry of some wild animal, and as it doesn’t die out, and as he feels his mouth stretched open to the limit, he realizes it’s him. He didn’t think he had anymore screams left to give, but Slade always manages to drag them from the depths. He screams again, vision going white with pain as Slade rips out the other end. Despite his hazy vision, Slade’s too pleased expression is far too clear as he holds out a stretched out worm like thing - Robin’s intestine.

Slade throws it to the side, and Robin coughs, blood splattering out from his mouth as it pools similarly in his abdomen. He doesn’t know how he’s still awake. Maybe it’s the sharp, acrid smell from the tearing open of his bowels. Or maybe he’s in shock from the sheer brutality. 

Slade picks up something, cylindrical and metallic and Robin just dazedly stares at the pretty color and heat emanating from it, until a gut wrenching howl escapes him as heat _\- a blowtorch_ \- meets his flesh, burning him to the very bone.

“Wouldn’t want you to go unconscious from the blood loss,” Slade comments, but Robin can’t even hear him, because _fuck_ , the _smell_.

There’s nothing quite like the smell of burning flesh - it burns and nauseates and has a way of getting into your head and making your head spin even if you don’t know what it is, but Robin does, and it burrows into his nose into his brain and it’s body burning, a fire spreading through his stomach, his bones, his blood and his very _mind_. It leaves nothing untouched, body writhing but unable to move, pinned under Slade’s mass - pain rising and rising with the volume of his screams till he - mercifully - blacks out.

But there is no much such thing as mercy know to Deathstroke, and Robin wakes up to a vicious slap.

“Get up, boy. We’re not done.”

His abdomen is still gaping open, edges of the wound burnt black, the disgusting smell of burnt flesh still nauseatingly present, but at least the sword is out. The endges of that wound, too, is burnt black. Robin shudders, and feels something wet and slimy binding his hands. He goes cold. 

Slade’s one eye stares back at him.

Swallowing - and trying not to think about where that would go - he cranes his neck, looking up. That baggy, pink worm-like mass is binding his hands together. 

He starts to scream, but it putters off into a cough as his throat is so sore. His own _intestines_ are binding him. He starts to sob–

A sharp slap strikes the side of his cheek.

“Oh don’t be so pathetic,” Slade sneers. 

Robin flinches, crying to control his sobs, but that movement brought the similar sensation of oily slime around his foot into focus and he tries to scream again.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Slade snaps, sounding irritated. “Quit it with the yammering, or I’ll give you something to scream about.”

Robin can’t stop, no matter how hard he tries, ugly sobs still burst out. 

‘Something to scream about’ for Slade apparently involves unbuckling his belt and taking out his cock, and Robin wants to curl up and _die_ at the thought of Slade in his ass _now_ , but.

Slade only crouches over his open abdomen, and Robin’s cries only get louder because he knows where this is going to go and he _doesn’t want to know_ , but it’s going to happen anyway and he _hates_ it.

He doesn’t realise he’s said it aloud till Slade laughs, a cruel, mocking sound. “I don’t care,” the man says, fingers digging in where they have _no right to be_ , mashing up the contents of his abdomen to make it even tighter, “We will keep repeating this. Over and over, because you are never more beautiful than you are when utterly _broken_.”

Robin would shout expletives if he could, but all he does is cough up more blood, throat screamed bloody raw, and no matter how hard he sobs, not a word escapes him anymore. 

As Slade’s cock enters, fucking into and rubbing against internal organs that should never have been touched in the first place, all Robin can do is stretch open his mouth soundlessly, tears cascading down. He thankful for them - thankful that they blur his vision so he doesn’t have to see the complete monster above him. Robin’s exhausted, but if he had to see Slade’s smug sadistic face one more time, he thinks he would drop dead right there, serum or no.

Slade comes quickly, a side effect of playing with the boy for so long, white come spilling into the boy’s body cavities and staining the organs, but Robin feels it stain his very soul like a shackle.

There’s no going back.

-/

Robin stares at himself in the mirror. There is not a single blemish on his face aside from his sunken cheeks and dark shadows under his eyes. And he traces the lines almost longingly. Each time he sees himself, he never quite believes it’s him at first - too jarring to see himself with that shock of white hair.

It’s not him. 

Like this, standing side by side with Slade, someone could mistake them for father and son - even if they are nowhere near such a thing.

He hates it.

He sneaks a glance at himself again, and frowns. It’s surprising how well the serum has preserved his skin. Every time Slade tears him open, the serum patches him to the same condition he was in before. He wishes it didn’t. Then Slade would have to hold back at least a _little_. He bites his lip. He doesn’t want to look like Slade. Maybe - as he gets older, he’ll look more different? More like himself and less like Slade. 

He drags himself out of his musings and hurried under the shower. It’s not always that Slade gives him a chance to shower with warm water, and if he wants to take advantage of it, he has to hurry. 

He relaxes under the spray, and reaches up on his tippy toes for the soap - but he still can’t reach it. Robin silently berates Slade for keeping it so high up - briefly wishing he were taller and stronger, on more even footing on the man so he could actually have a chance against Slade, but viciously squashes that thought in the next moment. You never knew when Slade might show up. With a sigh, he tenses up for a jump, but a larger hand swipes it off and hands it to him. 

Robin freezes. He didn’t even hear the man come in.

Slade quirks a brow at him, wrapping Robin’s hand around it, and Robin gives a full body flinch. “M-master,” he stutters, clenching the soap. It’s not the first time Slade has showered with him, but Robin didn’t even hear him come in. Robin’s heartbeat stutters like a rabbit. Is he going to be punished? But Slade is naked, too. So maybe just fucked.

“I’m going to have to lower that, aren’t I?” Slade says absently, narrowing his eyes at the shelf.

“I-I can manage, Master,” Robin is quick to reassure. He doesn’t want to know how pissed Slade will be at him if he has to go out of his way for Robin. “And I’ll get taller.” The thought would have disgusted and frightened him a while ago - staying so long that he’d visibly grow older in Slade’s care, but nowadays, that’s just a fact of life.

Slade quirks up his lips, like Robin has said something particularly funny. Robin’s heart pounds again, not knowing if it was the kind of amused that let Slade indulge Robin or the kind that was more like ‘wouldn’t it funny to see how long Robin could hold his breath?’ “No you won’t,” he corrects, something almost fond in his tone.

There’s a silence, filled in by the pitter-patter of the water droplets hitting the shower floor, as Robin tries to make sense of the words.

He swallows. “I don’t understand, Master.”

“The serum,” Slade says nonchalantly, casually picking up a loofa. “It preserves you in peak physical form of the age you were when you received it.”

Robin stares, a sinking feeling in his chest.

“You’re going to be fourteen till you die, Robin,” Slade says. 

Fourteen. 

He’ll be stuck like this forever. Till he dies.

He’ll always be younger, smaller, weaker, than Slade. He’ll always be stuck like this. Unable to escape. Unable to ever even dream of overpowering Slade. Stuck here, with Slade, being his damned boy toy while the Titans grow up. Get old. Without him. Because he’ll still - he’ll still be here. He trembles, each breath coming faster and faster. He sways, or maybe the world does.

He looks at Slade with wide eyes. 

Slade looks back curiously, like he is a particularly interesting insect. 

Robin blinks, the floor rushing to meet him - he falls -

And Slade does not catch him.

-/

Robin’s bones are missing again, this time, his femurs. His legs flop uselessly as his Slade lifts him by the hips, fucking his thick member into Robin’s hole. He whines, a useless, scared sound that he never quite manages to hold back. Slade always finds a way to pry those awful sounds out from him. Of course, he couldn’t fight back even if he wanted to - it’s rather difficult to kick someone when lacking your leg bones. 

With a grunt, Slade fills him, hot seed spilling into his pet bird, and the best Robin can except is for Slade to dump his body and leave. 

He remembers, distantly, a time when if Slade had hurt him that badly, the man would stay to bandage him up and treat him, even as Robin internally seethed and hated him for it. He misses that, and hates himself for being so ungrateful. But now, with the serum taking care of whatever healing he needed, that time seems like years ago, even if Robin knows with certainty it couldn’t have been anywhere near that long. 

Robin’s body hits the floor with a thump, and he obediently lays there, eyes closing as he prepares to wait out however long it takes for his bones to regrow. 

But Slade doesn’t go away. 

Slade is there, behind him.

He fantasises, for a second - thinking of Slade picking him up and carrying him in his arms to the bath to wash away all the fluids on him, letting him stay curled up at Slade’s feet till his own regrew - then scolds himself for daring to imagine such a thing. Tears burn his eyes, and he doesn’t bother holding them back.

He doesn’t have the will.

There is the dragging sound of bone against the floor - his bone - and he squeezes his eyes shut. It’s never good when Slade lingers. It usually means even more terrible things in wait for him. As he feels something hard and wet and warm press against his hole, he knows he is right. His eyes open, meeting the stare of an empty eyed skull - _his_ skull - and he wrenches his eyes back to his master.

Slade smiles pleasantly at him, relaxed, like he didn’t rip out a damned bone from his body. “I’m thinking about making another one. What do you think, boy?” Slade asks as he pushes the head of Robin’s femur against Robin’s hole.

Another one. Robin’s gaze drifts to skeleton next to Slade’s throne. _His_ skeleton, that Slade assembled by pulling out his bones and then assembling them piece by piece, one at time, ever so carefully. He shudders. For Slade to make another one, Robin will loose all the bones in him body. All over again. Tears spring up and fall freely. Whether it’s because of the pain of bone forcing its way back into his body through the wrong opening or the fear of the upcoming pain, he doesn’t know. 

He’s so tired.

“As you wish, Master,” he answers dutifully, dully. 

Slade’s eye narrows, and Robin knows he’s made a mistake. Fear seizes him, tensing up his body, which only makes it worse when Slade digs a finger to stretch open his asshole to shove in alongside the trochanter of the femur alongside the head.

He gasps, and cries out, but Slade is unmerciful, shoving the bone further in. 

“Boy,” Slade growls, a threat. “What have I said about answering my questions?”

Robin eyes blur, and he squeezes them shut as he feels the bone ruthlessly stretch him open, the head almost too wide, but still forces himself to answer. “That I should...” he lets out a whine at particularly vicious thrust, then bites his lip to focus. “...always answer your questions honestly, even if...” Tears spring anew Slade shifts the angle, letting the bone brush past his prostate with each stroke. “Even if I will be punished for it,” he finishes with a sob, opening his eyes.

“Were you honest?” 

The skeleton watches, silent and stoic.

“N-no.”

He feels its stare penetrate into his soul.

“Tell me the truth, boy.”

He wishes he were it - dead. Away from Slade and his touch and his hands and the broken pieces of Robin he sets up to mock him every single damn waking moment.

His bone fucks into him, and Robin replies, unable to stop crying. “I don’t want to _hurt_ , master.”

“That wasn’t so difficult was it?” Slade sneers.

“I’m sorry for lying, master,” he says and wonders how Slade will punish him for this infarction. The bone pushes into with punishing speed, and Robin numbly watches his cock rise. It’s inevitable - with the constant pressure at his prostate, but that doesn’t make the sting of his body betraying him hurt any less.

“Pathetic child. You can’t get through one punishment without incurring another,” Slade mocks, then grasps his cock. “But first, boy.” Slade gave him a tug at his cock. “First, you will come from your own bone fucking you.”

Robin’s glad Slade didn’t ask for an opinion this time - it would have only worsened his punishment. But orders, Robin knows how to respond to those. He whines, as the bone strikes his walls with a particularly rough tug, and replies –

“Yes, master.”

-/

“Really, kid?” Slade asks, raising a questioning eyebrow. “That’s what you want?” 

Robin nods, hated silver white hair falling in front of his face. “Please.”

“You sure you don’t want to ask for anything else? A chance to see your friends? The Bat? Perhaps your parents graves?” 

Robin flinches, but adamantly shakes his head. Seeing them would hurt too much. Break him. Shatter him even more than he is now. Maybe that makes him even more of a terrible person, but he doesn’t want to agonise himself with what could have beens right now. He just wants something that could make his life a little more bearable right here, something that will help him _recognise_ himself in the mirror. “I’m sure, master.”

“Very well, then.” 

An hour later, Robin is leaning against Slade’s leg, feeling Slade’s skilled fingers massaging against Robin’s scalp. He’s crying - not because it hurts, but because he’s gone without any sort of positive touch, any sort of interaction that doesn’t involve him getting hurt, for _so long_ that he can’t handle it. 

Ever since the serum, ever since this ruinous white hair appeared on his head, it felt like whatever gentleness Slade has shown him had disappeared too. Or perhaps it was that Slade’s increased cruelty eclipsed the rest. Robin didn’t know. All he did know was that he was starving for _any_ touch that wouldn’t hurt him.

He tries to be silent as he cries, afraid Slade will stop if he realises, but Slade sees everything.

“Poor little bird,” he chuckles. “So starved. You’ve been craving my attention, haven’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Robin chokes, afraid but unable to move, because Slade’s fingers on his head hasn’t left yet and they’re too soft against his scalp, too gentle and Robin’s can’t – he fears he genuinely would not be able to shift an inch even if Slade gave the order.

“Shh, shh. You can cry, it’s alright,” Slade soothes, as black stains his gloves, “Just keep being my good little bird, and I promise, you won’t lose this.”

As Slade finishes applying the black hair dye, Robin waits for Slade to leave, but the man never does. He stays, let’s Robin stay, and keeps touching Robin so gently he thinks he’ll break all over again. Gentle strokes on his shoulder, soft _kisses_ pressed against the back on his hand that _actually_ feel like kisses instead of devouring, just letting Robin lean on him and leech off his warmth. 

Robin sobs last for a while, but eventually pitter out into weaker sniffles and then, at last fade, leaving his eyes aching. Slades fingers press against his eyelids, and his breath hitches, certain that Slade will rip them out, but they only just rub small circles, soothing the ache. He lets out a whine, and melts against the touch. 

“Drink,” Slade orders, but the voice is so soft he almost doesn’t recognise it, holding the opening of a water bottle against Robin’s lips, and Robin gratefully gulps it down. When it’s done, he looks at Slade with something like adoration. He wishes, oh how he wishes that it could always be like this..

And when the time comes for the dye to be washed out, Slade does it just as gently and carefully as before.

After, as he stares in the mirror, at his newly dyed black hair, he wonders. If, now that his hair is blackened again, Slade will stop dying it in blood red so often.

He doesn’t stop. He hurts Robin just as cruelly, treats him just as roughly as ever.

But... Slade does keep his promise. As long as Robin is good, every month, he keeps re-dying Robin’s hair, in that same, almost disturbingly gentle manner as before. He never tells Robin to do it himself, Robin wouldn’t dare ask. 

So, even if Robin’s ribs are missing and his arm is broken and he has swords pinning his feet so he can’t run - it’s, it might not be _all right_ , but it’s okay.

And that’s all a failure like him could ask for.

-/ 

He’s strapped to an operating table, this time. Metal shackles bind him down tightly enough that he couldn’t move even if he tried - they’re all over his body: his neck, his shoulders, his stomach, and limbs. Every time he breathes he feels the cool of the metal against his stomach, the tightness constricting his throat. 

Robin never had a problem with small spaces before, but after today, he won’t be surprised if he develops claustrophobia. Not that it matters. Slade won’t tolerate that kind of weakness in his apprentice - the man would probably stuff him in a small box just to help him get over it. 

Robin flinches as he feels the press of a blade against his skin, and doesn’t close his eyes. He’s tried that before, to hide, to shut himself away in his own mind, but it doesn’t work. It just makes the pain stand out all the more and Slade - he shudders. Slade doesn’t like it when he closes his eyes and doesn’t look at him - the man cuts out his eyelids if Robin tries to close them.

So he keeps his eyes open, no matter how badly he wants to escape the sight.

His breathing increases as his skin is sliced open, lines drawn across his collar bone and down the middle of his chest. Vivisection. What organ will Slade take out today? Will he steal the breath from his lungs? His very _heart_?

A hand squeezes around the exposed part of his neck, and Robin releases a pained whine. 

“Stop squirming,” comes Slade’s order. “Or I might just cut off an important artery.”

Robin squeezes his eyes shut before he can stop himself, taking a precious few seconds to steady his breathing before he hurriedly opens them again. He prays Slade doesn’t notice, but as if he’d ever be that fortunate. Slade is there, with that eyebrow quirked up like always whenever he thinks Robin has done something particularly amusing - but amusing is _good_ because that usually means Slade won’t hurt him too much. 

“You _are_ trying, aren’t you?” Slade muses, laying a hand flat across over the wall of Robin’s chest, over his heart. It’s heavy, enough to crush straight through his chest and bones directly down to grasp and crush his heart. Slade could, if he wanted to. With the slightest of pressure. 

Robin freezes, stopping even the simple act of breathing.

“It’s just a pity that you’re so pathetic you can’t even manage such a simple act,” Slade sneers, fingers curling and digging into Robin’s skin. He’s going to do it, Robin thinks. Not even bother with any more incisions, just Slade and his claws that will sink into him and extinguish what remains of his heart.

Eyes blur as they fill with tears, but Robin still doesn’t dare breathe.

The hand uncurls, the pressure lessening till it was something less cruel. “Don’t worry,” Slade assures, meeting Robin’s wide eyes. “I’ll help you obey.” 

There’s a sharp prick at his neck, and his eyes dart down to see the syringe of a needle. It sends a shard of fear through him as he realizes - it’s a paralytic. Slade’s hand lifts, and Robin should be able to finally breathe again, but there’s another heaviness in his chest - one that won’t let him move so easily. His heart beat quickens as he tries to take in deep breathes but _can’t_ and he blinks rapidly to reassure himself he still has control over that part of his body. 

He doesn’t know if this is worse or better what he imagined.

Blood has stained his chest a vivid red, rivulets dripping down and across his skin. Not for long though. Slade doesn’t like it when his canvas is dirtied too early. This time, a dissecting forceps is accompanied by a long wire - the diathermy. Robin would flinch if he could, sink into the table and disappear, but his reality could never grant him a such sweetness. 

“Please,” it’s a hoarse whisper that escapes him, pitiful and hopeless and he knows it will lead him nowhere, but no matter how much he tries to hold it back, the words always escape him, searching for mercy where there is none. The sharp, stinging pain on his chest transforms into a constant burn as Slade drags the heated metal down his wounds, and he grits his teeth hard enough he knows it will hurt later. A nauseating smell permeates through the air, and despite the shallowness of his inspirations, it still manages to soak into and fill his lungs. 

Burnt flesh. Robin’s. His heart’s. 

It presses and presses, Slade meticulously pulling off the skin as he cut through the pectorals muscle giving away to the steady poking of the diathermy. His entire chest is on fire, but salty tears that leak from his eyes like a desperate attempt to douse the flames can’t even reach that far. His mouth is as stretched as far as it can go, a steady stream of whimpers and high pitched keens escaping him, unable to scream like it wants to.

Slade finally puts aside the forceps, and Robin would sob with relieve if he thought Slade could be appeased so easily. Deathstroke is a force of nature, a harshly unforgiving spirit, too powerful to be tamed and only appeased by offerings of Robin’s suffering that he takes and takes and _takes_ till his violent hunger is satiated. 

Cold hands meet heated, seared flesh and Robin has only a moment to let fear curl in him about what Slade will do -

_Crack_

Robin doesn’t know when his mouth closed, but it wrenches open with a soundless scream as hot pain radiates along a burning strip in his thorax. 

“One down, Robin,” Slade says, holding up something long and curved and dripping in yellow and red.

His rib.

“Twenty three more to go,” Slade finishes, as he sets aside the broken rib.

Robin whines low in his throat, his very eyes hurting from how many tears have been shed, and tries to tell himself that the first only hurt like that because he didn’t expect it.

It turns out - he’s right. The second _doesn’t_ hurt like that, it hurts so much more, somehow melding together with the first to create a exponential effect. It has his throat straining again, and this time he’s not able to stop himself once he start. “Master, please, I’m sorry, please-“ he’s not sure what he babbling, but Slade doesn’t tell him to stop, and he doesn’t think he could stop it hurts so much.

They break, one by one, red hot pain spreading and alighting in him like wildfire with each one, and soon he doesn’t know how many is broken except that it’s too much.

He blacks out, once, for a blissful few seconds, before Slade forces a shot of adrenaline into his body to wake him up. He rasps into awareness, chest still radiating pain like sun radiates heat. 

“I thought I told you,” Slade purrs, a smile curving across his face. “To keep your eyes _open_ , boy.”

“‘m _sorry_ ,” he croaks, voice too hoarse from screaming again. “I’m-“ He stops as he feels a fingers pinch his eyelid. “Please,” he pleads, eyes widening in terror as he feels it being tugged upward. 

Slade laughs. “Not yet, you’re not.” And then he pulls his fingers away, ripping clean the flesh with it. 

Robin _wails_ as red fills his vision, but he doesn’t even get a chance to breathe before Slade rips out the other eyelid as well. He smiles down at his apprentice, then says, “You won’t be looking away anymore now, will you?” 

Robin’s looks at him through red tinted vision with dead eyes, and moves his lips though no sound comes out. Slade knows what he says nonetheless, it’s the third most common thing for Robin to say, that isn’t ‘master’ or some form of begging - obedience.

“Good boy,” Slade says as he places a hand on Robin’s forehead, almost affectionately wiping away the blood there, and Robin _hates_ how a tight band around his chest loosens with that response.

“Now, for the rest.”

-/

There’s a decorative art piece on Slade’s bedside table - the only decorative art piece Slade has in his room - that Robin’s eyes are drawn to every time he enters. It’s a work of beauty, a delicate white chrysanthemum flower type, and ordinarily, Robin would call something like that pretty, but considering Slade oh so lovingly carved it out of his bones, it just makes him sick to the stomach instead.

If he had his way, he would have punted that stupid flower into the sun, but if he were able to do that, he wouldn’t be here in the first place, so it’s a moot point. 

He _hates_ it.

Now though, he is being forced to consider that maybe it isn’t the worst thing in the world after all. 

Not with the new addition in the room.

He froze again, in the doorway, not wanting to enter, but, well.

Slade unceremoniously kicks him in.

Robin sputters, landing in a squawking heap on the floor, with a suspicious crack.

“Slade!” he hisses, pained and outraged not knowing whether he was angrier because the man had literally broke his vertebrae with that kick or because of the new monstrosity in the room. 

He receives an unimpressed stare from the man, and Robin flinches and almost automatically tries to curl up into a ball. “I’m sorry, master.” The way he just snapped at Slade - it may have been instinctive, but it won’t end well. Slade’s beat his to a pulp for less. 

“Get up,” Slade orders, cold.

Robin swallows, and rises to push himself up on his elbows, but when he goes to move his feet - “I can’t,” he whispers to himself in horrified realisation.

“What was that, apprentice?” Slade asks, piercing. 

Robin barely stops himself from another full body flinch, and instead says, “I-I can’t move them. My legs.” Because Slade gave him a fucking spinal injury, he doesn’t add. What he does, instead, add in a small voice is, “I’m sorry.”

Slade makes a noncommittal noise, then picks Robin up by the back of his shirt. Robin bites his lip to keep from intaking a sharp breath, keeping in mind that he’s already pissed Slade off, and resists the urge to plead when it becomes clear where Slade’s taking him.

To the new accessory.

He’s thrown in without much affair, barely managing to scramble around with his hands before Slade clicks it shut.

A birdcage. 

A human sized one to be exact. 

Made out of bone white bars that look like Robin’s bones, but they can’t possibly be all from him, right? ...how many times has Slade done that again?

And the floor... it’s not hard, but the tan color and consistency... well at least now Robin knew what Slade did with his skin when he skinned him alive. 

“You’ll be sleeping here tonight,” Slade says.

Robin would doubt whether he’d be able sleep in a cage like his - made out of his own damn fucking body parts - but exhaustion is a difficult enemy to defeat. He knows he won’t win. 

His eyes dart to the bone white chrysanthemum. To the bars of his cage. To the floor that isn’t even big enough to lie stretched down on. Curled up maybe. A sick feeling churns up in his gut, and he reminds himself that if he throws up here, Slade will still not let him out. He’d probably make Robin clean it up. With his tongue. 

He meets Slade’s gave only for a second before ducking his head. “Yes, master.” Besides, at least, he’s not sleeping next to Slade. No matter how humiliating this is, at least Slade isn’t touching or cutting or _fucking_ him. So–

Robin promptly regrets his choice to look away when he feels hands grasp him by the hips and raise him up. He scrambles, hands digging into the bottom of the cage as he panics when he forgets he can’t move his legs.

“Robin,” Slade’s voice may be only one word, but it is delivered in a tone that brooks no argument, that will tear him apart if he doesn’t obey. 

Shuddering, Robin lets go. There’s a tug on his pants, and then Robin’s ass is pressing against the bars of his cage. Against his bone, torn from flesh. He hangs uncomfortably, resisting the urge to try to wiggle out. Slade won’t let him rest. Not even now. He holds back a bitter laugh. What a fool he’s been to pray that something as simple as bars could stop him. 

The man slams in like a freight truck, like he can channel the full force of his anger through his punishing thrusts and bruising grip. It’s enough to make Robin’s head nearly hit the bars on the opposite side. Internally cursing, he grasps the white - bonebone _bone_ \- bars and tightens his grip to steady himself. 

“What a pretty little bird I have,” Slade croons mockingly. “Won’t you _sing_?”

Robin shudders, crying out and the grip on the bars turning knuckle white as Slade began really pound into him. This isn’t what he wanted out of life - but fate has a funny way of destroying your expectations. He wonders if he’ll be ever able to leave this and the thought of of being here - stuck for fuck knows how long, as Slade’s fucking _toy_ \- makes him want to curl into a ball and never move again. 

Tears pooled in his eyes, but his already ragged breathing and bowed head should hide it. He doesn’t know why he always has to cry when he _knows_ it’ll lead nowhere but fuck damn it, he wants it to _stop_.

“Don’t hold back on my account, boy,” Slade sneers. “Cry. Scream. _Sing_.”

And so Robin did, throughout the entire time Slade broke his body, each thrust into Robin seemingly pulling out more and more of that salty free flow, till at last he released his seed into Robin and let his body collapse to the bottom of the cage, asshole dribbling blood and cum to the bottom of the cage. And he had so wanted to keep it clean. Robin shudders, and curls into the ball he wanted to be so desperately to be just a while ago, but it _hurts_. 

Everything hurts.

He hears Slade meander off, discarding his toy now that he was done playing with it, and does not raise his head till Slade is done preparing for bed.

There’s a sardonic tilt to Slade’s lip as he clicks off the light and says, “Sweet dreams, Robin.”

Robin closes his eyes and stays awake shivering for another hour in pain with come cooling dry in him and on him before exhaustion finally, blessedly overtakes him.

In the morning, he’s forced to lick clean all the dried blood and cum that stains the cage.

Slade calls it breakfast.

-/ 

“Oh fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Robin breathes and tries not to squirm because that would be very _bad_ considering Slade is shoving his thrice damned _sword_ up Robin’s ass. He shivers, and bites his hand to prevent from screaming. Slade is in a mood today. He doesn’t want to hear _anything_ from Robin. 

Blood spills from his asshole as the sword thrusts in and out, and he has to tightly press his other hand over his mouth to prevent noise from escaping. Tears prick his eyes, but by now they’re such a common occurrence that it doesn’t even register. He wants to scream.

But he can’t, so all he can do is focus on his breathing and try not to move as Slade fucks him with his blade. 

But that’s not enough for Slade. 

“What’s the matter, Robin? Not enjoying this?” Slade asks sardonically, and grasps Robin’s soft cock.

And that does it, Robin has to let out an ugly sob at that because Slade wants him to _come_ and everything _hurts_ and there is a sharp pointy object in his _ass_ so how the hell is he supposed to accomplish the impossible? Slade’s grip on him just tightens in response to the sound, then he begins to jerk Robin off with one hand while sword fucking him with the other, and Robin has to scramble as he tries to think of anything to get him hard, because this won’t stop till he _comes_ -

He doesn’t know how long it takes, but between Robin’s pounding fear and Slade’s skilful hands, he manages it at last despite the sword and could cry with relief. There’s no pleasure in the release - only relief that it’s _over_.

But it never is, not with Slade.

“You’re just a little masochistic whore, aren’t you, Robin?” Slade sneers. “Coming from my _sword_. What would the dear old Bat say if he saw you now?”

Robin can’t reply, only cry because Slade is _right_ . He is trash. Stained with Slade inside and out, there is no possibility of him ever going back and Bruce - he would be _ashamed_ of the pathetic little creature Robin has become.

The sword slides out of him, and Slade holds it suspended over Robin’s chest, letting it drip blood onto Robin’s skin. “Look at what you did, pet,” he says, sounding disappointed. “You’ve gone and gotten my sword dirty.” He crouches over Robin, his size easily dwarfing the boy’s and holds the sword horizontally with the one end at Robin’s mouth, “Clean it up.”

Slade wanted him to clean it - this sword, drenched in Robin’s blood, that had been inside him? Robin wants to fight, to scream, to rage, but despite the serum in his blood there is no energy in him. None to fight him and lose and just set himself up for more hurt. 

So he obediently opens his mouth like the whore Slade says he is, and sucks and licks the cold steel till it gleams with Robin’s saliva, till every drop of Robin’s blood and other bodily substances that had been in the sword is now in Robin’s body.

“Perhaps you’re not entirely useless after all,” Slade remarks, and puts aside his sword. He picks Robin up, holding the small body in his arms, and Robin slumps bonelessly against him - literally, considering his tibia and fibula are missing on both sides. He’s exhausted, and all he wants to do is rest, but he doesn’t dare say anything to Slade - at least not until he sees where they’re going. 

_No_ , is what he thinks - but never says, because you _never_ say no to Slade. “Please,” he croaks, desperately fisting a small hand against Slade’s chest armor. “Master, _please_ .” Not _that_.

“Actions have consequences, Robin,” Slade chastises calmly. “If you didn’t want to _suffer_ you shouldn’t have disobeyed me, boy.”

But hasn’t he been punished enough? Slade disagreed, apparently. 

There’s a cylindrical pole with a sharp end, and as they approach, Robin shudders and his heart rate increases. Unbidden, a sharp, desperate whine leaves his throat. As Slade starts to lift him up, he clenches tightly onto Slade’s arms. “Don’t leave, master,” he begs, looking at Slade with wide, beseeching eyes. This is a request Slade heeds - sometimes. If he’s in the mood. “ _Please_.”

Slade eyes him coldly, not saying a word, and the small pitter that a blood drop makes as it hits the floor is the loudest sound he’s heard. Slade places him above, positioning his asshole right above the pointy end of the pole, and begins to push him down. “Don’t squirm, Robin,” he says off-handedly. “It would be inconvenient if I had to bring you back from the dead.”

And Robin sobs - whether in relief or fear he doesn’t know - because that’s a promise if he’s ever heard one - and on one hand, Slade will never _leave_ him, and on the other, Slade will _never_ leave him.

Robin descends and descends and descends, clinging tightly to Slade’s arms with each inch forced into him, even as blood gurgles out of his throat but doesn’t even make Slade _hesitate_ . The pole isn’t that wide, but it is long, and it pierced through Robin’s internal organs and intestines without a care and it _hurts_. The blood in Robin’s asshole slicked the first few inches, but after that - everything’s a struggle. 

At last, Slade tilts his head back, and Robin knows the end is close. The pole exits through his throat and out his mouth, and Robin chokes as Slade lets go and he feels himself slide down the last few inches. The man steps back, and Robin blindly reaches forward in a panic. 

“I think,” Slade says. “You deserve some time out.”

Robin blood goes cold.

“Stay,” Slade says.

No, Robin thinks. Slade _can’t_ -

Slade leaves.

He’s not sure how long he spends like that, speared by the pole, sobbing ugly tears and making disgusting whines and pleading for Slade to come back and apologising continuously, but it it’s long enough that his body heals around the invader, so that when Slade yanks him out, all his wounds reopen again.

“Are you going to be good, now?” Slade asks later, as he eyes the broken mess at his feet. 

Robin sobs, crawling forward and pressing his lips against Slade’s feet. He rests his trembling head like that, and despite his ruined throat, despite the trembling lips and the blood pooled in his mouth, promises with every hint of sincerity - “I’ll be good.”

-/

It’s after a mission. Everything doesn’t hurt so much. There are no missing pieces. His bones are not broken. His body is, it seems, miraculously more or less in one piece - even if by now the same can’t be said for his mind. He has to be whole, though, if he wants to perform adequately on a mission. 

Slade is busy at the computer terminal, typing away.

He fought - in the mission.

Slade’s back is large, intimidating, but at least - at least he’s not looking at him. 

Right here, right now, he could fight again, if he had to.

Slade makes a clicking noise, seemingly dissatisfied with what he’s seen. 

Robin takes a silent step forward. 

The man doesn’t move. 

Another. Then another. Slade still doesn’t move. He’s closer enough to reach for Slade’s mask. Close enough to...

_Squelch_.

He doesn’t breathe as he whips a knife forward to pierce Slade’s heart from the back, doesn’t blink as blood splatters, doesn’t speak as Slade’s body shudders. 

There’s a gasp, then Slade’s body slumps.

Robin knows from experience this isn’t enough, he’ll have to –

The screen flashes, lighting up a fiery orange. Words blare across the screen.

NANOBOTS ACTIVATED.

His heart stops. 

“No,” Robin chokes, scrambling forward, shoving Slade’s body to the sides. Fingers dance across the keyboard, desperately trying to stop it, but it’s futile. Slade’s security system is too well designed to let Robin play havoc with them.

He sobs, dropping to his knees. His freedom is not worth that of his friends, but that doesn’t matter – they will die, right before Robin’s eyes while he can’t do the damn thing to stop it. Why, why didn’t he realise Slade would obviously have countermeasures in case of his death. _Why_ ? Why was Robin so _stupid_? 

His head is wrenched back by a tight grip, and he stares into a stone-cold eye. A press of the button, and the orange stops. Robin’s eyes flicker to the screen.

Still alive. For now. 

“Thank you,” he breathes, sobs. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Master.” Relief and fear in equal measure floods through him, leaving him a trembling, shaking, sweating mess. “Please, Master,” he begs, dropping his head to the man’s feet, “Punish me.”

Slade’s foot kicks forward, knocking loose a few teeth, but Robin accepts the pain. Everything is his fault after all. He nearly got the Titans killed with his stupidity. He deserves everything Slade will do to him. 

“Oh, believe me,” Slade says, and it suddenly strikes Robin – how Slade doesn’t sound angry in the slightest, but amused. “I will.”

He drags the boy forward by his hair, and Robin crawls along.

-/

Slade watches the boy hold back sobs as he tries not to squirm, artfully pinned to the wall by several blades going through him. Weighted needles piercing the boy’s pink nipples. Larger ones in the boy’s delicately small cock. Daggers through the boy’s hands. Rapiers going through the boy’s thighs and legs. Wrists and ankles held in place by wickedly sharp sickles. Senbon penetrating the boy’s chest. Several smaller blades decoratively placed into Robin’s skin. Two longer knives crisscrossed, lovingly embracing the sides of Robin’s neck.

To complete it all, a throwing star pierces Robin’s right eye, rendering him half blind.

Slade leisurely steps forward, observing his work from close up. Blood drips out of Robin’s body, staining the wall and dripping down to the floor, but the mess is a small price to pay for the exquisite site before him. He’ll take them out one by one as each one heals, but for now, Robin is stuck to his wall as living art. 

He yanks a rapier out of Robin’s thigh. 

The boy cries out reflexively, but isn’t even able to arch forward without knives kissing the sides of his neck and slicing it. He shudders still, wide wet eyes compliantly looking at Slade. 

Slade lifts the blade, licking off the blood, and smiles. 

Today, the tangy copper of blood is flavoured with Slade’s favourite additive - the sweetness of surrender.

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin suffers.
> 
> Slade enjoys.
> 
> As always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy.
> 
> This isn’t really a sequel or anything? Just more snippets.
> 
> Anyway, important bit: alta. It’s like this red dye, sorta similar to henna, that women can put on their feet as decoration during wedding ceremonies and stuff. It’s pretty. It’s just a throwaway line, so if you’re confused by what it is just ignore it.

“Give me your heart,” Slade says.

Robin obeys without even a hint of hesitation.

-/-

His chest cavity is open again. 

Slade is really quite fond of that– breaking every single one of his ribs in half with the broken parts sticking out, while his lungs and heart and liver lie exposed for anyone who’d walk by to see. Not that there’s ever anyone but Slade. 

Slade, who grasps his broken ribs and calls them the petals of a blooming flower. 

Like he’s something  _ pretty. _

Robin doesn’t see it.

Long nails are stuck through his palm, pinning him to a cross.  _ Crucified _ . Robin doesn’t know who’s sins he’s paying for, or for what. Maybe it’s the sin of existing, for daring to catch Slade’s eye and distract him. Maybe there is no sin, only him and Slade and Slade’s insistent desire for cruelty that has no rhyme or reason– simply him, his suffering, and  _ Slade _ .

His feet dangle, not even touching the floor– but he’s almost grateful for that. Slade beat them raw till he couldn’t see skin, then pulled off every one of Robin’s toes. Scraps of his skin still hang off, blood dripping down them sluggishly. His feet are stained crimson red, like a child clumsily but enthusiastically applied _ alta _ . If they had been touching the floor– his body shudders in the pain of what might have been, and then forces himself still again as it tugs on his palms. They’re pulled painfully apart, hands stretched beyond their limits for too long. He bled from them for the first hour, but it’s stopped now, the skin of his palm healing around the intrusion. 

His chest– bleeding and open and  _ raw–  _ will take longer to heal. Much longer.

His chin is tilted up by a hand, and dazed eyes blink at his master. He whines, high and pleading.

Like always, Slade doesn’t pay heed. 

“Hmm,” he says instead, critically eyeing Robin like one would appraise an art piece. That’s all Robin  _ is _ to him, right now. Simply colours of vermillion staining pale white, with ripped open raw pain and fear spiralling across the canvas, shaded in despair and misery– all pinned to the wall as  _ art _ . “You’ve stopped bleeding,” he says, an edge of disappointment bleeding into his voice. 

The artist is displeased by his work, it seems. Perhaps he will correct what is lacking?

Robin shudders, heart thumping faster– he knows what comes after, terror momentarily cutting through the haze. “Please don’t,” he begs, futile. 

A hand pins his wrist against the cross, then  _ yanks _ the nail out, reopening his wounds. He howls in pain, tears dripping anew, fingers and hand spasming but held in place up Salde’s unmovable hand. He stares dispassionately at Robin, waiting out the twitching and spasming– then slams the nail back in.

Robin chokes back sobs, trying to stay quiet, because he knows it’s not over, not yet. 

Not until Slade’s done the same with the other side too. For all his enthrallment with undisciplined, wild little things– if only to  _ break  _ it– he is ever so fond of symmetry, at least when it comes to injuring Robin’s body. 

He sobs, after, open chest rattling painfully with each breath. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs brokenly. “I’m  _ sorry _ .” It’s repeated, over and over like a broken record though Robin knows there’s no reason to apologize– Slade hadn’t even bothered to come up with an excuse for this act of cruelty. 

Slade simply wanted Robin to serve as a living decoration for a while.

This is not a  _ punishment _ .

This is Slade  _ playing _ with his toy.

“Stop that,” Slade orders, and immediately, Robin’s falls silent, miserable. He just wants to make things better, for Slade to stop  _ hurting _ him so much. Why– why can’t Slade just let him know what he needs to do? 

He wants to be good, he  _ does. _

Slade lifts up his hips, and Robin cries out with pain as his shoulders and arms are finally relieved of the ache of being dragged down by his whole body weight. They burn, steady and throbbing, but he’s distracted by the press of Slade’s cock head against his dry hole. He whimpers, shutting his eyes– and opens them immediately as Slade gives a sharp growl. 

The man shoves in, a wicked smirk curling his lips at Robin’s reflexive scream. 

“You can’t stay quiet at all, can you, boy?” Slade muses as he fucks Robin. 

“I’m sorry,” Robin chokes.

With a sigh, Slade pushes a hand into the boy’s chest cavity. “I thought I told you to stop that.”

Robin opens his mouth to apologize again– clicks it shut as he realises he’s  _ not allowed _ to do that– panics, breath coming hard and fast and heart beating so hard he’s sure it’ll fall out of his chest any moment. Right now, it really could. Robin’s so  _ weak,  _ so  _ fragile,  _ so  _ broken–  _ it’s not so improbable that an already shrivelled, empty little organ could simply tilt right over. It will– he’s sure it will. Dizzy and light headed and overwhelmed, he looks at Slade with wide watery eyes, pleading.

Begging him to just tell him what he  _ needs _ to do.

Slade laughs, hand digging into him. “You silly little thing.” His hand wraps around Robin’s heart, and Robin’s breath catches. 

“Please,” the whisper escapes him, unbidden. He’s not sure what he’s begging Slade for– to let go, or to tighten his grip till his heart bursts and finally  _ ends everything forever. _

Slade squeezes, Robin’s heart thrumming in his grasp as fast a frightened hummingbird one step away from heart attack, and smiles. “So afraid of your master, boy?”

Robin shudders, hardly daring to move.

“That won’t do,” Slade muses. There’s that glint in his eye, a harbinger of Slade’s cruelty, that Robin  _ hates _ . Slade squeezes and relaxes his grip to the rhythm of his thrusts–  _ in and out, squeeze and relax–  _ and what Robin hates  _ more  _ is how easily his heart begins to beat in a matching rhythm.

“ _ Remember _ this, pet,” Slade murmurs against his ear. “Remember how easily I took control of your  _ heart _ , remember how easily I can  _ rip _ it away. Every single heartbeat of yours is a  _ gift _ from me to you, a moment you are allowed to continue to exist, to serve  _ me.  _ Thank me for it, boy.”

There’s a shuddering relief at finally being told what to do, and Robin immediately complies. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you, master– thank you for letting me live–“  _ that’s a lie that’s a lie  _ life _ is  _ not  _ what Robin wants  _ “–thank you–“ his words drift into indecipherable babbles, but he doesn’t stop until Slade shudders to a stop– teeth sinking roughly in and breaking the vulnerable skin of his neck– and outright orders him to.

Slade still doesn’t let him down, instead pulling out and watching with a satisfied curl of his lips as the come and the blood drip out of him and down his thighs all the way to his already bloodied feet. A drop lingers at rim, hovering before it falls to the floor. More follow it. He surveys Robin, his masterpiece, once more. “Beautiful,” he declares, then–

–walks away.

Robin sobs, and does not bother to call after him. 

-/-

Robin is lucky, Slade says sometimes, in his own brand of sadistic humour. No one has ever faced his blade, his ire, so many times and still exists to tell the tale– except for  _ him _ . 

Robin thinks he is the  _ un _ luckiest of them all. 

The others– they got an end, they didn’t  _ hurt  _ anymore. They don’t have to shiver in the night wondering how Slade will  _ tear them apart _ the next day, they don’t have eyes that continuously  _ ache _ from being wet more often than not, they don’t cough up blood from  _ screaming  _ so long and violently it tears their throats. They don’t have Slade violating every part of them mindbody _ soul,  _ they don’t have to  _ burn _ as Slade mocks and humiliates them till he is reduced to nothing but  _ ash _ , they don’t have to clutch missing organsbone _ flesh  _ and sob and writhe with agony as his broken body tries to heal itself only to have Slade break it  _ again _ – and instead of only getting sleep when they fall into unconscious from exhaustion, they get to  _ sleep forever.  _

And ever.

And ever and ever and  _ ever. _

No nightmares. No Slade. No hurting. 

He wishes he were them– that he was anywhere but here. That he isn’t so damn familiar with Slade’s blades.

The scalpel cuts, and he knows he won’t feel the pain immediately. The pain always hits later, after Slade has cut him open and then it hits like a fucking truck.

His body tenses, breathing shallow, and focuses on looking at Slade’s unmasked face. It’s  _ better– _ to look at his master, to focus on him instead of the pain clawing into him. The more he thinks of it, the more he sees it, the worse it gets, the worse his  _ nightmares _ gets– and his sleep is already little and troubled enough as is. 

The cut is deep, this time, gong below fascia and muscle and to the bone– is Slade going to take it out today? His lips tremble, and eyes blink back tears.

For fucks sake, why can’t he just get  _ used to it  _ already? Slade said, once upon a time that’s so long ago it might as well be a fairytale, that he’d learn to  _ like _ it.

...then why hasn’t it come true yet?

Why hasn’t his suffering  _ abated _ ?

Why does it hurt?  _ Every. Single. Time.  _

Retractors pull the muscle open, exposing the bone, but Slade doesn’t yank it out of his joints. He switches out the scalpel in his hand. Lifts the new one. Brings it down. And starts making several short cuts on the bone.

Robin bites  _ hard _ the leather bit in his mouth– to muffle his screams to an acceptable standard, Slade said– and tries to ignore the harsh sound the new scalpel makes. It’s not as sharp as the previous– every strike dragging out and painfully tugging. 

The sound  _ grinds _ . 

_ Rattling _ in his femur all the way up to his skull.

This is– this is  _ new,  _ and that makes Robin anxious because– new is never good. New was the serum, bringing pain and no comfort; new was the fucking, painful and relentless; new was  _ Slade–  _ violent and harsh and unforgiving, and always, always  _ cruel. _

Slade must notice something in him that makes his lips quirk up on one side in a smirk. “You have a tendency for forgetfulness,” he explains. “Forgetting who  _ owns _ you. What you  _ are _ . I was hoping that if I carved it into you, you’d have an easier time remembering.” He lifts Robin’s leg up, muscle still pulled apart, so that Robin can see the exposed femur.

_ URINAL _

The letters stare out at him, plain and final, and Robin feels a stab of something painful and bleeding and  _ shameful _ right in his chest. He knows– he  _ knows _ Slade doesn’t think much of him. That’s he’s just his pathetic little boy, and sometimes not even that, not even a  _ pet,  _ but a  _ toy,  _ an object. 

Even so… for the first word– Robin  _ knows _ with utter certainty there will be more like prey knows predator when they sees it– Slade carves in him to be  _ that,  _ for him to be reduced to nothing more than a trash receptacle for liquid human waste, for the word not to be  _ mine,  _ or  _ Slade’s,  _ or  _ pet,  _ or  _ boy  _ or anything that staked Slade’s confusing mix of possessive affectionatism or claiming but instead something that didn’t even  _ acknowledge _ Slade’s ownership of him–

–somehow, Robin realises with dawning horror, it hurts.

...it  _ hurts,  _ that Slade didn’t mark him as his. 

He shouldn’t be feeling that. He shouldn’t want  _ anything of Slade’s–  _ but, really, isn’t it better, to be owned by someone rather than any damned person stepping by?

He’s breaking.

Tears cascade down the sides of his face. 

“What are you crying for, boy?” Slade sneers, tracing the letters. “What, you need me to shit in you too? Bring a urinal isn’t good enough for you? Want to be a proper  _ toilet,  _ is that it?”

Robin shakes his hand frantically.

The man’s in a good mood. Slade laughs, and picks up the scalpel again. He says indulgently, as he cuts the flesh of Robin’s other thigh, “Maybe next time.”

He won’t have to go through that  _ this _ time. Will only have words engraved into his body. Nothing else. He should be thankful. After all, Robin– 

Robin is  _ lucky,  _ right now.

-/-

“Stay still, now,” Slade orders, and despite the sting of the pain and tears, Robin digs his fingers into his thighs and obeys. He concentrates on breathing through his nose, steady and deep, tries not to shift on the cock impaling him, and blinks rapidly as Slade raises the needle. 

This shouldn’t– this shouldn’t hurt this much. They’re just stitches. Robin has gotten them before, even in the  _ before–  _ the time before Slade. They hurt, of course, but compared to all the other things Slade has done to him? In comparison to whipping his back till not a shred of skin remained, to raping him till he couldn’t scream anymore, to cutting Robin open and breaking his bones and tearing off  _ pieces– _

Compared to all that, it shouldn’t hurt as much, but somehow it still  _ burns _ in his very soul. 

Speech is supposed to be a fundamental human right. Even if Slade denies him nearly all his rights  _ anyway,  _ to be stripped of the right to talk, to communicate, to even  _ beg  _ or plead for  _ mercy–  _ to deny that he is even a human worth  _ listening _ to– somehow, it  _ aches  _ that Slade… doesn’t think he deserves even something as simple as  _ that.  _

Despite all his efforts, he still ends up sniffling as the first stitch goes in, through the corner of his bottom lip and out of the upper one. It’s  _ fire–  _ burning in a way he wasn’t expecting, throbbing at the point of contact as blood drips in his mouth and stains his teeth then spreading and spreading through his cheeks. He’s had stitches, he knows it shouldn’t hurt  _ this  _ much, even as the thread tugs his lips shut– 

_ Oh,  _ he thinks numbly, spotting Slade dip the needle in something–  _ acid– _ before it again returns to his lips. Slade’s sadistic nature is not satisfied with only shutting his mouth, it demands Robin suffer and burn every step of the way.

Tears make his body clench up, but that only makes his ass squeeze around the cock stretching him open, reminding him how  _ hard  _ his master is. All he can think of is how he is sitting there, on Slade lap with his cock up his ass, crying and burning and suffering and not allowed to  _ express a single word– _ And Slade is there, in him, hurting him,  _ getting off  _ on his suffering like it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted.

“Pets,” Slade says at last, as tears stream down Robin’s face, “should be  _ seen _ and not  _ heard _ .” He presses the needle against skin, watching as a new bead of blood blooms. 

In, and out.

“Your begging  _ is  _ sweet,” Slade acknowledges, “But sometimes, you need to learn to shut your damn mouth and take your punishment without protest, in utter  _ silence.” _

He yanks the thread through painfully, and Robin resists the urge to scream.

“Do you  _ understand,  _ boy?” Slade asks harshly, and Robin, not sure of how or what to respond, just whines docilely and prays it’ll be enough. 

“You will beg when I tell you to,” Slade says, pulling shut the final stitch. “You will  _ scream  _ when I demand it. And you  _ will  _ learn to keep your mouth shut and stay  _ quiet  _ when I order it.”

He brings Robin’s face close to him, his cock shifting within the boy. Blood drips down from Robin’s cheek and onto his bare thighs. Robin looks at him with pained, watery eyes, lips quivering. 

Slade leans forward, licking off a drop of blood before it can fall. He traces it up, to the source, lapping at it till it stops bleeding. He does it, again and again at every point the needle entered and exited, dragging his tongue over the red thread. It should be disgusting– but it’s a touch that  _ isn’t _ pain, so all Robin feels is gratefulness, and leans against Slade in tiredness.

It doesn’t last.

Slade’s cock is still in him, hard, and soon enough, those gentle licks become painful bites and nips, hands on hips dragging him up and down and leaving him shaking, and Slade is so rough and vicious and uncaring as always–

–it  _ hurts,  _ but he tries so hard not to  _ scream– _

He fails.

The scream is wretched out of him as Slade slams in and simultaneously breaks the skin of his neck, unable to be held back. He sobs, pain throbbing and burning in his ass, in his neck, in his  _ mouth– _

His stitches are torn with it, leaving his mouth a bloody mess. 

His eyes lift to look at Slade, terrified.

“I-I d-didn’t m-m-mean t-to–“ he stutters, heartbeat stuttering with him like crazy.

A finger is pressed against his lips, quietening him. “I believe I told you,” Slade’s voice is soft, but no less dangerous. “To  _ shut the hell up.” _

Robin shuts up, and doesn’t speak as Slade continues to fuck him, finish in him.

Doesn’t speak as Slade laps at the bloody mess in his mouth till it heals.

Doesn’t speak as Slade takes the needle and thread and sews his mouth shut all over again.

Doesn’t speak as the tears that fall finally dry, leaving his eyes aching.

They both know that while this may have been the first time the stitches tore, it won’t be the last.

They know too, that Slade will repeat the process as many times as necessary for Robin to  _ learn.  _

And so, inevitably, he must.

-/-

Robin doesn’t know why Slade’s pressing his old mask on his face, carefully sticking it over his eyes even as he hangs, still nailed to the cross. It’s uncomfortable– not surprising, considering how long it’s been since he’s worn it. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t like being reminded of  _ that _ time– a time before Slade, a time when he had been a more or less  _ normal _ human being. 

It puts his situation in too sharp contrast. 

Robin’s not– he’s not Robin anymore, not really. 

It makes him uneasy that Slade would put it back on after so long. 

He hangs, breath shallow and short, chest still open, bleeding from his palms while he squirms around a butt plug that Slade had shoved unceremoniously up his ass to plug him up– but not before come and blood slinked shamefully out of his hole and dripped down his thighs, marking him. 

Slade sits down in front of his monitors, not too far away– after all, he needs to be able to  _ appreciate _ his art piece– and flips on a switch.

_ Fuck. _

It’s vibrating– the too big plug shoved in with only come and blood as lube, pressing right against his prostate. It  _ hurts,  _ more than anything, and he  _ knows  _ he shouldn’t but he still can’t help but squirm as it vibrates. He whines, pained, as it only results in his hands being tugged and straining against the nails. 

And in the midst of it all, his cock rises, too stimulated not to be.

He can squirm, try to get away from the vibrations but only worsen his wounds, or he has to make himself still and suffer in silence.

...he  _ hates _ making choices like these.

“Perfect,” Slade murmurs, then disinterestedly turns back to his work. He clicks away, one by one, the monitors lighting up, and–

Oh,  _ fuck.  _

Faces. 

Each one of the several monitors show a different face, a different mask, some that Robin recognises and some that he doesn’t, and Robin– Robin is all too visible,  _ naked _ and  _ nailed _ and utterly  _ exposed _ to all those who’d look this way. And he’s–

He’s  _ hard,  _ his cock still jutting up, and they will see him broken and bound and  _ hard  _ like he’s  _ enjoying  _ it–

He stifles a whimper, pressing back against the cross and shutting his eyes like that will hide him. It won’t. 

Voices reach him, Slade’s and others and it’s not long before he hears–

“Deathstroke, is that–?”

“Yes,” Slade answers before they can speak Robin’s name. Robin cracks open an eye to see Slade lean back, fingers overlapping, and he can hear the smile on the man’s face as he continues, “I like to consider myself a mercenary, but occasionally I do dabble in art. What do you think of my latest work?”

There’s silence, and then someone says, in a tone he can’t quite decide if it’s reverent or mocking, “It’s a masterpiece.”

“Thank you.  _ It  _ is pretty,” Slade purrs nonetheless, then flicks his eye back to Robin. 

“Say hi, pet,” he orders.

Robin feels loathing and humiliation burn him deep into his bones,bfeels his eyes overflow with tears and slip through a crack in the mask, feels vibrations radiate up through his body to make his body  _ shake– _ or maybe that’s just the sobs he can’t quite hold back– and opens his mouth to obey–

–Slade turns up the vibrations–

And what leaves his mouth instead is a long  _ moan. _

Full blown laughter. “Slut!” Someone jeers, and Robin feels himself burn. He wishes he could cry literal rivers, oceans that could smooth every burning inch of him, that could wash him away from this– drown him in the depths of the sea where he could just… curl up and sleep,  _ forever _ . 

Never waking up sounds so tempting nowadays. 

“That's not how you say hi,” Slade scolds, amusement lacing his voice, turning it down again. “Say it properly, pet.”

Robin raises lifeless eyes up to the screens. He says, blankly, quiet and defeated and  _ hollow _ , “Hi.”

There are dithers and chuckles at that, but more muted this time.

Slade turns back to the meeting, and Robin resolutely keeps his eyes shut through it– no desire to see the faces of those who would look at him and mock him– and instead focuses on the pain in his arms, on the aches of his body.

When it’s over, Slade approaches him, finally turning the stupid plug off. Robin’s cock aches, but the pain fades into the background of all the other sensations burning in him. “Anything to say pet?” 

Robin could tell him a lot of things, scream and rage or even beg for Slade to let him come– but he’s tired. “Thank you, master,” he says instead, dully. “For giving me a mask.” If nothing else, there’s no chance of anyone recognising him. Bruce and Alfred will be  _ fine,  _ won’t ever be associated with the pathetic lump of flesh he’s become. 

It’s a cold comfort. 

Slade smiles approvingly at him, and Robin feels some of the burning ache filling him finally soothe away. “Good boy,” he says. “But–“

And that one word refills his world with terror.

He fucked up again. How did he fuck up  _ again _ ?

“–you kept your eyes closed the entire time, didn’t you?” Slade asks idly, hand grasping the plug.

“I’m sorry,” Robin blurts out, panicked. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry  _ I’m sorry–“ _

“Sorry isn’t enough, boy,” he chastised, grabbing the boy’s chin to tilt his face up as he violently pulls the plug out.

“ _ Please.” _

It goes unheeded. 

“Time for your punishment.”

-/-

The serum is an amazing piece of work, a marvel of science, and the scientists who created it must have been absolutely  _ brilliant–  _

Robin wishes, sometimes, in the darkest parts of his mind, he could meet them and tear the flesh from their bones like Slade does to him. Hunger gnaws in his stomach like an ever persistent hyperactive puppy high on coffee seeking attention, and Robin curses the people who designed the serum just well  _ enough  _ that while he won’t die easily from starvation, he nonetheless feels every pang.

Every part of him is weak, trembling, head spinning from the lack of food and ribs so clearly visible on his skin, but he is  _ still  _ denied the mercy of death. 

He leans against Slade’s legs, head slumped on the man’s thigh, tired eyes blankly looking through him. He would beg for food, would do  _ anything–  _ but stitches pull his lips shut, like they have been for the past two weeks, and Robin is so, so tired. The stumps of his knees and elbows  _ ache _ – throb in reminder of the pain when Slade cut them off– the man having decided  _ pets  _ didn’t need feet or hands.

And yet, there is still gratefulness in him that Slade hadn’t seen fit to push him off yet, leaving to flail uselessly on the ground again. He would loathe that feeling– but he doesn’t even have the energy for  _ that. _

All he feels is a persistent, insistent desire to  _ feed. _

It draws deep gouges though his belly, the sharp pain ever present, crawling his throat to strangle his brain as it demands for sustenance, leaving no room for anything else. 

Cum stained fingers trace his lips, pushing the fluid in between the stitches and into his mouth, and Robin sluggishly pushes his tongue against it to swallow it down. He may despise the taste of it, but it’s something he can swallow, something that fills his belly even if only a little– and so he forces himself to swallow down every drop of it.

“Good pet,” Slade says, petting his head and simultaneously wiping off the rest of the cum on his hair. “You can drink now.” He allows enough slack on the leash for Robin to be able to move further.

It’s said graciously, like Slade allowing him some huge favour, but it only makes Robin shudder. He forces himself to move nonetheless– the level of sheer stupidity it is to not obey Slade is one that has been beat into him many,  _ many  _ times. 

The pet bowl isn’t far from Slade’s throne, but on stumped limbs, each inch is a struggle to crawl. Each time he puts weight on a stump, even partially, it sends more pain shooting up his nerves, competing with his hunger to see which could hurt  _ more.  _ Each step, there’s a slight pull on the leash– not enough to indicate for him to stop, but enough to remind him of his place. When he finally reaches it, he slumps over in relief. 

He eyes the bowl apprehensively.. 

Just stares at it, throat so,  _ so  _ dry. 

He stares perhaps a bit too long. 

“Drink, boy,” Slade orders impatiently, watching.

Robin hunches over it, a bowl just for his pet to drink from, and sways at the acrid smell emanating from it. Sometimes, Slade is kind enough to give him water. Other times– like now– it’s piss. The man is ever so fond of that, pissing into the bowl and then forcing Robin to drink it.

And Robin may hate that, too, but his throat is  _ parched _ . Dry as a desert, aside from the lingering taste of cum. And piss still has water in it.

Robin dips his head, till his lips touch the pool. With his lips sewn shut, it’s the only way he’s able to drink– submerging his mouth below the surface and then sucking it up. It stings his stitches and is noisy, messy– he can’t help that, he’s  _ thirsty  _ and once he starts drinking he can’t stop. His body is screaming for water to fill it– and has decided piss makes a good enough substitute. Soon enough, the bitterness of cum is washed away, leaving behind the tang on piss.

Slade’s eye never leaves him, his gaze heavy.

“Look at you,” He says, amused. “Leashed and crawling and dumb, drinking from a bowl just like a proper pet.”

Robin makes a helpless noise that’s halfway a sob, but doesn’t stop drinking till there’s not a drop left. He doesn’t know when Slade will let him drink again. And besides, Slade is  _ right.  _ He’s leashed and collared, has to crawl because he’s unable to walk on two feet, can’t speak but only whine and cry– how could he even be considered  _ human _ , now?

“Hungry, boy?” Slade asks, watching him finish with a smile that could almost be considered fond. “Would you like some food?”

He whines low in his throat, eyes imploringly looking at Slade. He hasn’t in so long.

The man laughs softly, and tugs on his leash. “Come here.”

Robin can’t scramble there fast enough. Surely, to give him food– Slade would have to take out the stitches, right? 

He settles in front of Slade, then freezes as Slade takes out a tissue and actually  _ wipes _ at the piss still remaining on his lips. He’s never– Slade doesn’t  _ do _ that, doesn’t clean him up, the most he’s gotten  _ ever  _ is a hose down–

Slade lifts him up, and Robin forgets to breathe for a moment. He’s on Slade’s lap. Not– not onto his  _ cock,  _ but on his  _ lap,  _ with one hand supporting Robin’s back, the other stroking his knees. It’s like– it’s like Slade is  _ embracing  _ him, almost comforting him. He looks at the man with wide eyes, shocked, but Slade only smiles down at him. 

Robin has– he’s  _ missed _ this. He’s missed this  _ so much.  _ Missed how Slade would hold him,  _ take care _ of him. He’s frozen, unable to move for fear of shattering this fragile moment, but Slade only pulls him closer, letting him lean him onto him. 

“Oh pet,” Slade says softly, amused. “Crying, again?”

Robin shudders, and lets himself relax in the hold. He wants to thank Slade, thank him for this comfort, but he can’t talk and can’t touch– all he can do is turn his head and press his lips against the man’s chest, and pray it’s enough.

“Sweet little thing, aren’t you?” Slade laughs, and brings a red seed up to Robin’s still sewn mouth.

_ Pomegranate _ . 

The boy blinks, confused, then realises it’s small enough to fit through the stitches. There’s a spark of disappointment that the stitches won’t come out– Robin crushes it  _ ruthlessly _ . This is already more than he could ever hope for. 

The taste hits his tongue, and for a moment, Robin is _ blinded _ – it’s so  _ sweet.  _ He hears a moan, and is startled as he realises it’s his own. There’s laughter above him again, and another seed pressed against his lips. And another. And another.

He eats eagerly, the sweetness of the fruit building up bit by bit in his mouth with each seed pushed through his stitches, overpowering the lingering taste of piss, and simultaneously, the gnawing hunger in him abates. As soon as he swallows, immediately, there’s another. He bites the tiny thing, savouring the taste for as long as he can, pressing it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth, before his hunger clamors and demands he swallows. 

He doesn’t even have a second to feel regret for quickly he’d rated it before a seed is pushed yet again into his eager mouth. Slade doesn’t stop, and this time, Robi is  _ grateful. _

Red juices run down the corner of his mouth, staining him, but Slade swoops down and licks it clean before it falls. 

A finger is pressed between stitches, stretching them painfully till they start to bleed again, but Robin doesn’t care. He eagerly sucks and licks the tip, chasing the taste of pomegranates on Slade’s skin. 

He looks at Slade adoringly. 

“Persephone got six pomegranate seeds. She stayed for six months,” Slade muses, holding a seed between his thumb and index. “You’re getting the whole fruit.” Slade smiles, sharp and poisonous, but Robin can’t bring himself to care as Slade presses the seed in. “You’ll be staying  _ forever.” _

He should be  _ scared _ , he  _ knows  _ he should be scared, he knows he  _ will  _ be scared again when he isn’t high on the temporary reprieve, but somehow, enveloped in the warmth of Slade’s arms with the sweetness of the fruit still on his tongue–

The prospect of his eternity in Slade’s hands doesn’t sound so hated after all.

-/-

Slade breaks him, first.

Fingers and toes and wrists and ankle and bone and joints– everything is crushed under Slade’s cruelty.

The sounds of his bones breaking is  _ so  _ loud.

And yet, not a single sound is able to escape Robin, screams and whines and pleas all muffled by the muzzle gag.

He thinks he must be delirious with pain, wants to crash and fall and drown in the cloyingly sweet call of unconsciousness, but  _ Slade is not done with him.  _

He waits, in between each break, waiting out till Robin’s body stops arching in a reflexive scream and slumps again, before reaches forward and breaks yet another part of Robin. From his pinkie to ring to middle to index to thumb– every time, Slade curls each trembling digit between his own, pinches the skin like he’s examining some ware, and then–

– _ yanks– _

_ – _ and Robin  _ breaks _ . 

It’s not enough that Slade breaks his arms  _ once.  _ No, he does it again and again and  _ again  _ till Robin blacks out from the sheer pain only to be pulled into consciousness by the howling pain of yet another break.

His hand covers his Robin’s small curled fist and pulls it up, Robin dangling from his hold like a puppet. He squeezes the broken fingers, grinding the bones against one another and  _ crushing. _ No matter how Robin spasms and reflexively tries to pull away Slade doesn’t stop– he  _ never  _ stops– he just envelops Robin’s small wrist and  _ squeezes till it breaks  _ and there’s the telltale  _ snap-snap-snap  _ of bone breaking, and then finally,  _ finally  _ lets go. 

Robin curls into a ball, cradling the broken pieces of himself like that will protect him from Slade, and cries.

“Your other arm, boy,” Slade orders, and Robin– despite knowing what pain is coming– obeys. 

Maybe if he’s obedient, Slade will let him get enough rest. 

Slade breaks it, of course.

He doesn’t let go this time. Both hands grasp his arm, and the knowledge of what Slade will do cuts through the haze a split second before–

Robin  _ screams,  _ but not a sound comes through. 

He doesn’t have a moment to even  _ breathe  _ before Slade snaps it  _ again.  _

And again.

And again.

Bones break, flesh tears, muscle is crushed, and nerves rip apart and scream as they ignite, and still,  _ still  _ Slade goes on and on.

Slade doesn’t stop until both of Robin’s hands are a mangled mess– swollen, bloody, twisted, with so many abnormal curves and out of shape that if he didn’t know what it was, if it wasn’t attached to him, he wouldn’t be able recognise them anymore. He can’t move them, can’t even  _ twitch  _ then without his nerves screaming so loud he swears he blacks out before he dragged back into consciousness with another wave of the unending pain.

He can barely see, vision so hazy and darkened and blurry, but he makes sure to keep Slade in his vision. The only sound as Slade looks down at him is his ragged breathing and suppressed whines.

A weight on his ankle– Slade’s boot.

It’s not over. Slade’s not done.

And Robin– Robin doesn’t have the energy to do anything more than cry as he feels the all too familiar despair settle over his heart, a crushing weight so heavy he’s surprised his ribs don’t snap and sink through his lungs and muscle till they touch his spine.

He wonders how he isn’t dead yet.

And then he’s not capable of thinking much at all, as Slade boot rises and falls and  _ crushes– _

Why?

Why does he break so easily under Slade’s foot? Wasn’t he supposed to be a hero– once upon a time? Easily beating up so many villains? But not Slade. Never Slade.

Ankles and femurs and tibia splinter and shatter again and again, crushed so easily.

Slade grinds his foot in, into the ashes of his wings and his pride and history and happiness and all that which made him  _ him. _

He could do a quadruple flip, once. His parents taught him how, and had been so  _ proud _ when he succeeded. He hasn’t done a single one since Slade.

An unforgiving foot comes down on his knee, breaking his kneecap. 

He could fly across rooftops, once as free as bird, grappling from roof to roof, soaring so fast it felt like he was really  _ flying _ . Bruce flew with him. Bruce didn’t come for him.

Again, this time on his leg, grinding fragments of already broken bones through muscle.

He could smile, once. Laugh. Be  _ happy.  _ Now, he doesn’t remember what happiness  _ is. _ All he knows now is Slade. Slade, and the suffering he inflicts so sadistically upon Robin, breaking his body and his mind ceaselessly. All he knows is how to  _ beg,  _ to  _ scream,  _ to  _ cry.  _

Slade stomps on him, over and over and over again, and Robin can’t even crawl away– just lay there and scream and pray for Slade to eventually get bored enough with him to leave and just  _ end  _ it– or him.

Slade finishes, eventually. Maybe?

He steps away, eyeing the barely breathing mangled mess that is Robin, gives a noncommittal hum, then walks away.

He hears his steps fade, then come  _ back _ .

Robin stares blankly up with hollow, sunken eyes. Not done. How else will Slade destroy his body?

Something is Slade’s hand. Glowing. 

He forces his eyes to focus. Metal. Red hot heated metal. Sword? Will Slade cut him open again?

It rises–

_ –falls– _

And burning, incomprehensible pain erupts on Robin’s shoulder. His mouth stretches open in a scream but no sound escapes but a gurgle because Slade–

Slade just–

He just  _ cut off  _ Robin’s entire damn mangled mess of a arm.

_ Why?  _ Why if Slade was going to do this from the beginning, cut off his arm anyway, then why spend so much time destroying his limbs? Just cruelty for the sake of  _ cruelty? _

He chokes, breathes, and  _ screams,  _ because really, what else can he do?

What else can he do but scream as he pours out agony, and pray that it will reach  _ someone? _

The sword comes down on his other shoulder, blood spurting where the flesh isn’t quite cauterised enough, and all Robin can see is red and black and  _ dizzying _ colors he can’t comprehend. Again and again, right over his hips, and all Robin hears is the resounding ringing of his own screams, the smells of the metallicity of blood and the sickening sweetness of burnt flesh mixing to create a nauseating scent that clots in his nostrils.

Even so, he feels the world shift, familiar fingers curling in his hair and pulling him up so  _ easily _ . He’s so  _ light _ now– without limbs, without arms to fight or legs to run, senses barely working. He dangled in the hold– and wonders, if his scalp will fall as easily as his limbs did.

Robin’s lifted, rising, up and up, then comes right on down– the all too familiar feeling of stretching open– down on Slade’s cock.

He shudders, twitching, and unable to hold up his weight, falls helplessly against Slade’s chest, hurting and burning and throat raw from screaming, desolate as a lost traveller in the desert, searching for any hint of comfort.

Slade denies him, as if he’d do anything else, then lifts him up and fucks him. 

“This is where you  _ belong _ ,” Slade croons, right in his ear so he will hear, and Robin– knowing just what a marred, useless, pathetic little thing he is– 

Robin believes him.

-/-

His skeleton is exposed. 

Robin isn’t even talking about the  _ stupid  _ twin skeletons Slade has arranged beside his throne, but the one  _ in _ his actual body. Retractors pull muscle and flesh apart, and  _ keep  _ it there, preventing the serum from doing its job and healing him. In his legs and thighs, his arms and forearms, his chest and even his scalp. It exposes his bones– bones so  _ fragile _ Slade could snap them with one hand, break into fragments to cut his flesh, crush into fine powder that he’d blow over his skin.

But today– bones do not break, even as his skin and muscle do, as the remnants of his pride and self-identity do with each carved word.

_ URINAL  _ and  _ CUMDUMSTER  _ on his femurs.

_ COCKWARMER  _ and  _ COCKSLUT  _ on each humerus.

_ PATHETIC WHORE  _ and  _ PISSDRINKER  _ on his forearms.

_ FUCKTOY  _ and  _ FLESHLIGHT  _ on tibias.

_ BOY,  _ on his sternum.

So many more, Slade has gleefully told him each one. He’s finishing up his ribs now, where ‘Property of Slade Wilson’ is etched over and over along. It  _ hurts  _ but even so… it had been a  _ relief _ when Slade had started carving that– when he started marking Robin as  _ his _ .

It made Robin’s sobs start anew– but, well. He knows exactly how ruined he is now. He doesn’t know how Slade could still want him when he’s like this, but he  _ does.  _ Robin is still  _ worth  _ something to him– even as he’s being broken down to this pathetic creature, he’s  _ wanted. _

Someone still wants him, and the words on his ribs are proof of that.

The scalpel touches his forehead, and Robin forces himself still. If Slade has to redo it, he won’t be happy. The man doesn’t bother to remove his flesh first, instead carving directly through the skin into bone. Blood drips down into his eyes, but Robin focuses on the letters.  _ Pet,  _ he realises. 

A creature, not human, belonging to a person, to be used as desired for their amusement. 

Fitting.

“There we go,” Slade says, stepping back, sounding pleased.

It’s done, Robin thinks. Now Slade will probably fuck him, then either leave him like this and wander off or give him time to heal up till the wounds and words are gone and–

Slade’s bringing something else.

He closes his eyes.

Slade is not done with him, he’ll never be done with him, and it was  _ stupid and naive and utterly foolish  _ of Robin to ever think that.

He opens them, uninterested in having them ripped off again.

Slade taps at carved words. “Usually, you’d just end up healing these,” he says. “And we certainly can’t have that.”

Robin mind blanks. The words– Slade would make sure they’d  _ stay? Forever? _ … would they stay till he died, till flesh decayed and left behind only bone? Is that what people would find? A skeleton marred with carved words of  _ urinal _ and  _ cumdumpster _ and  _ whore _ and  _ property of Slade Wilson  _ and–

Is that–

Is that what his teammates– and  _ Bruce–  _ would find, when Slade got bored of playing with him?

Is that how he would be buried, next to his  _ parents?  _

“Well, I’m sure you’ll fuck up and end up with a punishment and then I’ll have to rip out your bones  _ again,  _ but then I’ll simply have to redo them, I suppose.”

He doesn’t even have the strength to cry anymore, unfocused eyes dully staring off into the distance.

Slade brings over a thin, hose, maybe? Robin’s not sure. It’s attached to a pipe, attached to a box. The tip is almost as small as a pen tip– the width of the letters, Robin realises. It almost looks like a pen.

It touches his humerus and he–

– _ screams– _

_ – _ it’s in him, in his bones–

–eating away, feasting,  _ burning _ –

–he  _ howls– _

It’s too much, it burns like he’s in lava, and Robin suddenly discovers, that  _ yes _ , he is  _ still _ capable of  _ crying– _

–freezing cold air  _ blasts  _ over his arm but it  _ still  _ just buns and  _ burns  _ and  _ why– _

“There you are,” Slade says nonchalantly as he lifts the tip of the pen, relieving the pressure. “You were quiet for a while there, nice to see you’re still here.”

“m’sorry,” Robin whispers, muffled as he yanks himself out of the screaming pain that is his arm, back to Slade. “I’m _ sorry _ , master…” What was that? His eyes shift, suddenly noticing the way the letters gleam.

It’s golden. 

_ COCKWARMER _ stares back at him, mocking him with how shiny it is.

Robin swallows, and timidly asks, “What–“

“It’s molten gold,” Slade answers. “Over a 1000 degrees Celsius. Rapidly cooled of course. It’ll fill in the words and ensure they don’t get healed over.”

Tears pool in Robin’s eyes. “Please don’t–“

“Ah-ah,” Slade tuts, placing a finger over Robin’s mouth. He chided, though he still sounds amused, “You should know better, boy.”

With a slump, Robin tries to ignore the still stinging burning pain of his arm. He’s going to have to go through this. Fuck, how many words did Slade carve on his body? How many times would he have to go through this?

“Such a broken little thing you are,” Slade says, fondly. 

That’s another word that’s on him. On his collar bone, right beside  _ bitch.  _ Robin can’t even protest that– he  _ is  _ broken.

_ “ _ You know, there’s a name for this,” Slade continues, bringing the pen up again. “When they repair broken pottery with gold mixed lacquer– kintsugi. Supposed to enhance the beauty or history or some shit like that.”

Slade brings it down, and Robin spends the next minute screaming his throat raw. He gasps as it stops, shuddering.

“All your broken pieces are being filled up with gold _ , fixed,  _ so tell me, boy,” Slade continues. He reaches forward, tilting the boy’s face upward, so his pained eyes stare into Slade’s amused one. 

Robin whimpers, strained and small.

Slade smiles, sharp and mocking. “Do you feel beautiful yet?”

-/-

Usually, Slade just rinses off his hair to was off the dye and then lets him have a quick shower after, but Slade’s in a good mood today. Robin doesn’t dare ask  _ why _ , just is grateful for how much Slade is willing to indulge him, letting him have a  _ bath _ of all things. Not that he’s having it alone– that Slade would never allow, and if he’s perfectly honest, with Slade in a good mood like this, Robin would rather Slade stay with him anyway. 

Warm water at that perfect, comfortable temperature surrounds him, submerging him up to his neck. He gives a contented sigh, leaning in and pressing closer onto Slade’s chest. Snuggling, almost, if he’s dare utter such a cutesy word anywhere in Slade’s vicinity. 

Arms encircle him, softly petting his back and one curled in his hair. Fingers massage gently into his scalp, carding through his wet and freshly dyed black hair. It aches, from where Slade has dragged twisting his fingers in it and dragged him and and pulled him and literally  _ threw _ him into the wall opposite by his grip in it, but now– now, they only comfort. It’s soothing, having Slade’s fingers running through his hair. That hand could, on a bad day, squeeze and break open his skull. But today– he  _ won’t _ . Today, that same hand is instead so comforting that if Robin closes his eyes he could swear that they weren’t the same.

The tips of Slade’s fingers brush back the hair out of his forehead, rubbing across his hairline. Fingertips press into the hollow behind his ear, rubbing soothingly then dancing down to the sensitive skin on the back of his neck. They press almost apologetically against a partially healed wound–a  _ vicious _ nick where Slade’s sword had cut him just his morning– then move on, trailing down his spine. 

It’s nice– it’s so  _ nice _ , Slade's warm body against his own, the arms encircling him, the hair petting and the soothing touches all over his body, so comforting that Robin could fall asleep like this. 

Already, he’s sleepy.

He doesn’t want to sleep– he wants to prolong this moment for as long as possible, but he still ends up dozing. He jerks awake, panicked, but he’s still there, with Slade, hands still soothingly petting him.

“You have time,” Slade assures, and Robin feels a brief flicker of unease because it  _ has  _ been a while and Slade’s never this nice for this long, but pushes it aside because worrying is pointless anyway. “Don’t worry, pet. You can relax.”

Soft touches on his ankles, his spine, his ribs. The reassuring weight of Slade’s arms around him. A gentle kiss on Robin’s forehead. 

And Robin relaxes.

He adores this– adores these rare moments when Slade is  _ soft _ towards him. 

He looks up, meeting Slade’s uncovered face. It’s relaxed too, looking at him with something like fondness. “Thank you,” Robin says softly, then lays his head back down, at the crook of Slade’s neck. 

Hands trail downward, cupping his ass and parting him, and Robin’s breath hitches.

“It won’t hurt,” Slade promises, but doesn’t move further, one finger simply lazily circling his rim.

He looks at Robin expectantly, and it takes a while for Robin to realize that Slade is waiting for permission. There’s a jolt of unexpected emotion as he gives an automatic nod, too conditioned for any other response– is  _ this _ what it’s like to be an actual living person? Robin’s... forgotten.

Slade’s fingers slips in–  _ one _ , then  _ two _ , then  _ three– _ stretching him out so slowly Robin starts wondering if that’s all Slade intends to do. It doesn’t hurt, they’re not rough, gentle and massaging and going on for so long and so soothing Robin almost starts dozing again. Then he’s being lifted up, tensing in expectation, and is guided down onto Slade’s cock.

But–

There’s no pain.

It doesn’t  _ hurt _ . 

...That’s so  _ strange. _

And sure Slade  _ said  _ it wouldn't hurt, but it  _ always  _ hurts. There’s just the stretch, the fullness, and this– this Robin could see himself liking, which is  _ weird.  _ Isn’t sex supposed to  _ hurt?  _ How was it possible for it to be  _ nice _ ?

There’s a soft laugh, and Robin feels himself flush. 

“You look so adorably confused right now,” Slade explains. “It can feel  _ good _ , too, pet.”

Robin knows that. Slade’s certainly made him come and hit his prostate enough times to beat  _ that _ into his head.

But the buildup is slow, languid almost, this time. It’s not painfully overwhelming. 

Slade rocks into him with smaller thrusts, then speeds up gradually, rocking into him. It’s good, slow enough that Robin feels every inch and fast enough that there’s a delightful level of friction present. Small whines and pants fall from Robin’s lips as he shudders. “Slade,” he whimpers, arms curling around him. “Ah–“

“Good?” Slade asks, and all Robin can do in nod dazedly. Slade chuckles, the vibrations radiating through his chest to Robin, then wraps a hand around the boy’s cock and suddenly, incoherency gains another meaning for Robin.

Slade keeps a close eye on him, timing it so that Robin’s coming right after he does, and immediately after, Robin collapses back down against Slade’s chest, cock still in him. 

Slade lays a reassuring hand on his head, patting it. “Good boy,” he says fondly. “I’m proud of you.”

And that– that is too strange for Robin to ignore. He swallows, pushes away the pleasant haze. “Slade?” He asks, voice small. “What’s going on?” He’s  _ scared _ . This is  _ too  _ good.

What’s the catch?

Slade smiles, and there’s that familiar hint of cruelty hardening his eye this time. He reaches, the pocket of his pants close by, and takes out two newspaper clippings. The date’s not there, Slade removed then of course, but the headlines are clear.

Robin holds them in shaking hands, paper crinkling.

‘TEEN HERO ROBIN DIES IN DUTY’

‘WAYNE HEIR FOUND DEAD IN OVERDOSE’

They… declared him dead. In both identities.

“They gave up on me,” he says numbly. His vision blues, his voice cracks. “They  _ gave up  _ on me.”

He’s breathing fast, choking on air, the paper slipping from his fingers into the bathwater. 

It sinks.

It sinks, like everyone’s hopes for him had sunk, his his faith in himself had sunk, like  _ he  _ had sunk, is still sinking, drowning every day and moment in Slade.

“Shh, pet, I’m here,” Slade comforts, pulling him close again.

Robin gives an anguished cry, then wraps his arms tightly around Slade’s shoulders. “They  _ gave up,”  _ he gasps. “They said I  _ died.  _ I–I’m  _ gone.”  _ It’s not fair, it’s not fair that they abandoned him when Robin would  _ still  _ die for them, any moment, any second, when he has suffered for them every damn day, when he had let himself be broken so much that he is  _ unrecognisable– _

_ It’s not fair. _

But maybe, it’s for the  _ best.  _

Robin, is, after all, so much worthless trash that he would have only inevitably brought them despair  _ anyway _ .

“It’s okay to cry, Robin,” Slade says, voice so gentle, but his face still twisted in that cold, cold smile.

Robin buries his face in Slade’s shoulder, and lets out ugly sobs, clinging so tightly to him as he drowns. they’re moving on, they’re all moving on without him Robin is  _ dead  _ and he will never be able to smile again at his friends, Bruce,  _ Alfred–  _ he takes a gasping breath, and  _ screams _ . 

Slade embraces him, hands holding him soothingly. “You’re okay, Robin, you’re alright,” he soothes. “Just breathe.”

Slade’s words are soothing, and Robin tries and tries to hold onto to that, to pay attention to that and not how Slade’s cock is rock hard again in him– Slade does so enjoy his suffering. 

Even so, in a moment of weakness, Robin gasps out between sobs, “Don’t leave me, Slade,  _ please.” _

Slade strokes the bumps his spines, as gentle as a feather. “I would have  _ never,”  _ he murmurs, and Robin believes him. 

-/-

His head is clearer now, colors no longer spinning and spilling– even if his limbs are little more than stumps that still flare and scream out at him with every movement. Robin’s learned, by now, to not make too much noise for every single hurt– that only ends with Slade cutting out his tongue.

...he’s already had to regrow it once yesterday– Slade cut it off and then made him  _ swallow  _ it down, the bloody, choking taste still staining the back of his throat– he doesn’t want to go through all that again. 

Instead, Robin bites his lip, chews the inside of his cheek, grits his teeth– does  _ whatever _ he can to ensure the sounds he lets out are only small whimpers and whines and quiet, muffled cries instead of the screams that threaten to spill out. 

It’s futile.

Fingers grip his shoulders, digging into the burnt stump, sending pain  _ bolting _ up his nerves straight to his brain, and he screams. 

Slade gives him an unimpressed look, and Robin’s breath hitches. 

For fuck’s sake, why is he so  _ weak _ ?

Fingers dig in again, and Robin swears his vision blackens, but this time, Robin forces himself to still, to not scream, but–

They just press in more and more, till inevitably, Robin ends up giving a sharp keen. He flinches as Slade’s fingers loosen. 

He failed.

“I’m sorry, master,” he says smally, just once, head bowed.

Slade sneers. “You should be,” he grumbles, eyes looking down at the boy on his lap in disgust. He pulls Robin up, off his cock.

Robin’s been fucked so long he’s almost become numb to it. He doesn’t think Slade’s left his ass or mouth unfilled since he– since he dismembered him. His hole flutters as it leaves, cool air fluttering in. It feels… empty. Lacking.

Like Slade has scooped out far too much of Robin for him to ever feel whole without Slade in him.

“So  _ loose _ ,” Slade says, irritated, like he wasn’t the one who  _ made  _ Robin that way. “Fucking annoying.”

Robin stays silent, even as his eyes widen as Slade flips open a penknife. It’s pressed against his abdomen, and he shudders. “Master,” he whispers, panic rising as he tries to clench his hole shut. “I’ll do better– I swear, I’ll be better–  _ please–  _ I  _ promise please–“ _

Slade snorts. “You’ll  _ try _ ,” he says scathingly. “You’ll try and you’ll fail, because you yourself are nothing more than an absolute  _ failure _ .”

Robin sobs, and then gives an ear-splitting cry as Slade gives an oblique slash through his stomach, right through the thin layer of fat. The wound’s wide enough that his intestines spill onto Slade’s lap, and he doesn’t even have the arms to try to hold it in. Slade settles Robin back down on his cock, one hand his shoulder keeping him steady while the other presses into the wound, rooting around. Robin can see it, see Slade’s arm over his intestines, see blood on his forearm and spilling onto his thighs, see the lump that is Slade’s fist rooting around on the left of his abdomen. 

“Please,” Robin begs, unable to stand the sight and finally just squeezing his eyes shut though that doesn’t do  _ damn _ to stop the tears from leaking out, “Please don’t take–“

“Shut up, boy,” Slade snaps. 

His mouth clicks shut.

The hand goes deeper, and deeper, and–

Robin gasps, chokes, as he feels something within him  _ squeeze _ , his insides suddenly contracting around Slade’s cock. 

“Found it,” Slade hums pleased, and as his arms flex, Robin feels himself tighten again. 

He whimpers. Fuck. Slade– Slade has his fist wrapped around his– his fucking  _ rectum,  _ like he’s a damned fleshlight that’s gone too loose that needs to held tight, and–

Slade did this– cut him open and dragged out his guts, just so he can, what,  _ jerk off  _ inside Robin?

...Just how far has Robin fallen in his eyes? Just how  _ little _ does Slade think of him?

To be used like this…

He’s no crown jewel to be  _ treasured– _

He’s just a convenient thing to be used and  _ discarded– _

He’s not even valued as an  _ object. _

The hand on his shoulder shifts, and he frantically inhales air before it squeezes his neck shut. Slade lifts him up, his tiny stumps flailing uselessly, then slams him back down on his cock while simultaneously tightening his hand as he strokes down. Robin lets out a desperate squeak that’s drowned out by Slade’s groan of pleasure.

“Pretty little toy,” Slade praises him, hand in him rhymically squeezing, in turn squeezing Robin around Slade’s cock. 

And that’s all he is to Slade right now– just an toy for him to play with, then dump on the floor and step over him when he’s done.

“You’re an utter failure in most things,” Slade says critically, pulling him up, hand still choking Robin. “But perhaps, with a little bit of training, you’ll make an adequate  _ cocksleeve _ .” Slade doesn’t say anything else as he uses Robin, jerking him up and down by the neck and and stroking himself through the Robin’s walls, soft grunts and hisses escaping him till he finally, finally comes inside. 

Robin doesn’t speak either– it is, after all, not the place of toys to speak. He stares out blankly with dull eyes instead, little pieces of him dying as his breath does. It’s perhaps a bit morbid for him to wish such, but he wishes, for an instant, he really  _ were  _ that– just an inanimate, feelingless, stone cold object. 

Then he wouldn’t have to  _ suffer _ .

Then he wouldn’t have to feel anything at all.

-/-

Every part of him  _ aches.  _ His breaths are shallow and shuddering, sending sparks of pain with every rattle of his chest. His ribs burn, his eyes ache, his limbs throb, and he’s so  _ tired.  _ His mouth is stretched around a gag, Slade having gotten tired of his screams some time ago. Even so, his throat feels raw. 

Is he even breathing? 

It doesn’t feel like it.

Breathing is supposed to be something living creatures do. And Robin feels so much like a  _ dead _ little thing, a dead  _ carcass _ on the train tracks, twitching only because of the train cars moving over him, screaming unheard and unseen and uncared for.

“And that’s done,” Slade says, not loudly, like he’s talking to himself.

Robin still hears them, though. Sluggishly, he opens his eyes, unaware of when he even closed them. He drags his gaze to Slade, unable to even shift his expression to one that isn’t utter  _ agony– _

_ –molten fire  _ in his bones–

–filling him–

–consuming him in their unending heat–

– _ unforgiven– _

–and instead just holds his head up as long as he can, before it drops again. He doesn’t  _ want  _ it to, doesn’t want to risk Slade’s ire, but his body doesn’t obey him– too exhausted and utterly spent under Slade’s ministrations.

“Mm..ph..” he tries to speak an apology, but it’s garbled around the gag, and comes out unclear. 

_ Letthisendletthisendletthisend– _

“Poor little bird,” Slade rolls his eyes. “Getting exhausted with so little play, pet?” Steps, and Slade’s shifting around again. “That won’t do.”

Robin goes cold.

A punch hits his gut, knocking out what little breath he had let. 

“I’m not  _ done  _ with you, yet, pet,” Slade chides. “Pay attention.”

All Robin can do is give a pitiful little whine, pained and wheezy. He tilts his head towards Slade and forces his eyes open further, but it’s not enough. 

Slade sighs, impatient and with that hint of sharpness that indicates he’s getting annoyed. “Really, boy. With how  _ weak _ you are, it’s hard to believe that the same serum that made  _ me  _ made  _ you.” _

What goes unsaid is where the fault lies– within  _ Robin _ . The serum improves, perfects. If Robin is weak, it is because he was pathetic from the very beginning. 

Slade doesn’t mention the constant starvation, exhaustion, or beatings, and Robin doesn’t dare point it out.

“Your heart first, I think,” Slade muses. The golden pen that had so cruelly marred his bones is still in his hand.

_ Heart?  _

Slade couldn’t mean to–

_ SNAP  _ goes his ribs, Robin’s mouth reflexively stretching in a soundless scream, and then Slade is there– in him, rooting around– it clasps something in him,  _ tugging _ at it, bringing it closer to the surface.

Robin has  _ not _ stopped screaming.

He does not think he has stopped screaming ever since Slade first tested out his healing abilities from the serum. 

Sometimes his screams are soundless due to his very throat being in shreds, sometimes muffled by a cock or a gag, and sometimes, it’s locked in his mind by the sheer  _ fear  _ of Slade, but–

He has  _ never _ stopped screaming. 

Slade brings molten gold up to his heart. “Would you like a heart of gold, pet?” he asks, eye glittering with amusement. 

Robin shakes his head, weak. 

“I’ll give it to you,” Slade croons.

He’s not lucky, this time. 

It descends– carving into flesh– burning him– branding him, marking him,  _ claiming  _ him–

And Robin cries, silent, muffled tears dripping down his eyes as he’s not even able to move in protest.

He hates Slade for doing this to him.

But he hates himself more for being so weak.

He twitches, spasming in the hold as golden letters are etched into his very  _ heart– _ one stroke, two, three _ four–  _ how many scars will Slade leave on him?

He’s tired, chest burning and every breath a whimper that begs and  _ begs _ for salvation but that is a grace that Slade has not seen fit to bestow on him and so he burns in hellfire instead.

“Mine,” Slade says with satisfaction, and lays a kiss over the golden letters. “All mine.” His lips press against the beating heart, only making it thrum faster.

Slade chuckles it, moving back.

Robin doesn’t have to look to see what is written, yet another stake of Slade’s ownership. 

MINE.

Glittering gold letters on his heart, a permanent mark, a chain heavy on his heart to serve as a reminder of how he is  _ irrevocably _ bound to Slade.

Robin… doesn’t know how much of it is true through. Slade  _ owns  _ him, undeniably, but his heart?

Never. The answer should be never but Robin is nowhere near as strong as he hoped to be, nothing close to what he should be.

He’s breaking.

Slade’s breaking him, pulling out pieces and gluing together–  _ with gold–  _ metaphorically and literally, and Robin. 

Is. 

_ Breaking _ . 

Slade  _ owns _ him, now.

This is a fact, as sure as his blood runs red, as sure as how easily he cracks and crumbles under Slade’s touch. 

Slade branding him like this– on his heart, liver, kidney, intestines– is only forcing him to face a truth he’s been trying to deny for so long. 

How  _ easily  _ he leans into Slade’s touch. How he  _ craves  _ so desperately for any affection from the man. How much he  _ begs  _ for any kindness– a pat, a hair ruffle, a simple brush of fingers, or even just a “Good boy.”

The word carved onto his heart is a truth, or at least is well on it’s way to becoming one.

He is Slade’s.

His body is Slade’s.

And now, his  _ heart  _ too is  _ Slade’s _ . 

-/-

“Prove your loyalty to me,” Slade orders lazily, lounging on his throne, and Robin– 

–Robin shudders and obeys.

He’s already a wreck, sobbing and crying, naked and covered in filth, in blood, in  _ come. _

He wants to beg, to plead with Slade not to make him do this. But Slade has never listened,  _ ever,  _ so instead he bites the insides of his cheek hard enough to fill his mouth anew with the coppery tang of blood. He lifts the scalpel with his own two hands– handle bone white, his  _ own  _ bone– and presses it against his chest. His hands are trembling– shaking so much but not daring to let go of the white knuckle grip he has on the handle.

_ Breathe in, hold, breath out, hold.  _

It takes several breaths before his trembling stills to an acceptable level. It hurts less when he doesn’t protest, when he obeys, when he simply  _ gives in _ completely and utterly to Slade.

All the while, Slade sits atop his throne while Robin kneels in front of him. “I’m waiting,” he reminds, dispassionate. His single eye appraises Robin critically. 

Will he pass this twisted test of his master’s, or will he fail?

The scalpel is pressed into his  _ own _ skin with his  _ own _ hands as he watches with his  _ own _ eyes. He shudders still, shutting his eyes tight. The most frightening part isn’t the threat of  _ dying– _ it’s the fear of  _ not _ . It’s the fear of waking up, everyday from today extending to forever– forever with Slade, no escape to hope for even in death. If he receives that assurance of eternity, what will he have left?

“Go on, pet,” Slade’s voice is all too soft, a hand reaching forward to curl into his hair, and Robin is too far gone to be ashamed at how easily such a small touch soothes him. “You can do it.”

Slade says he can, so it  _ must  _ be true.

The scalpel sinks into his skin all too easily. It’s wickedly sharp, Robin doesn’t even realise it’s cut through bone until Slade’s soft huff of laughter, pulling back his hand. 

“Not so deep,” Slade says, amused. “You’re not going for the lungs.”

Slade’s uncovered hand is  _ warm _ , warmer than the blood dripping down his chest, warmer than the pain screaming through him with each ragged breath. 

“Yes, master,” Robin whispers, eyes scrunched up, and drags the blade again, cutting through muscle and sinew and bone, pulling them away to expose his insides. Robin looks down, staring at his uncovered chest cavity. It’s a sight that never fails to make him dizzy, but it’s a sensation he’s gotten used to. He can work through it. Even so…

“Well, boy?” Slade prompts as Robin falls still again. 

His mouth opens, a  _ please  _ ready to fall from his lips, and  _ freezes _ as he sees Slade’s eye narrow and his lips purse. He didn’t know what he would beg for– for Slade to reconsider, or perhaps just for something as simple as the reassuring weight of Slade’s hand on his head again. 

He knows he’ll receive neither.

His eyes sting and his mouth shuts, and the scalpel drops. Before Slade can express his displeasure, he  _ shoves _ his hand into his rib cage, staining his fingers with his own blood as he roots around inside, searching.

Slade’s eye widens, almost in pleasant surprise.

He finds his target, closing his fist around it, feeling the thrum of the beat. How many times has Slade done this– held Robin’s life in his fist and threatened to take it away? And now– now Robin would do this all on his own. He blinks back tears.

Searching, he meets Slade’s eye, in quiet desperation.  _ Let this end,  _ he prays.  _ Let this be the end.  _

Somehow, he has no hope for this prayer to be fulfilled. 

His fist squeeze, tugs once– gasping painfully– twice, thrice, and then– 

And then his marred heart is in his hand, ripped out of his chest by his own fist, and he offers it up to Slade on his knees– like a twisted, horrific pledge of eternity. Him and Slade. He chokes, chest cavity filling with blood, swaying, but his hands are clasped tight in Slade’s own– in acceptance of Robin’s offering.

His vision darkens, and Robin should be  _ praying  _ he never wakes up again, but the last thing he hears before he falls is–

“Good boy,” Slade purrs, pulling Robin’s collapsing form close to him–

And all he can feel is warmth in the empty space where his heart once resided.

-/- 

Slade lays a kiss over the golden letters on the boy’s ripped out heart, licking the blood off it, even as he pulls Robin’s collapsed form between his knees. He pets the boy’s hair– not that he’s awake for him to even feel it. Or even  _ alive _ currently, for that matter. Blood still gushes out from Robin’s chest, pooling on the floor and staining his boots and Slade feels an inexplicable fondness for this boy. 

His perfect, broken, obedient boy.

Such a good pet, ripping out his own heart with his bare fist to offer it to Slade.

It makes Slade want to  _ ruin _ him. 

Pity the boy’s dead currently. The serum will kick in soon enough, but Slade sees no need to hold back when Robin’s body is open and so  _ vulnerable  _ before him.

Slade looks at the red stained organ in his fist, at the scalpel on the ground, and smiles.

Robin will already have to recover from a lot of injuries, so Slade feels no guilt whatsoever– not that he’d have felt guilt either way– as he shoves the scalpel through the aortic valve and out the inferior vena caval opening, ensuring a pathway. He shoves brings it to the tip of his cock, and shoves in.

“ _ Oh,”  _ he gasps. It’s still  _ slick _ and  _ warm _ with Robin’s blood, the organ sliding pleasurably across his cock. He growls, pulling it up and down on his cock like it’s one of the boy’s holes. The head of his cock pops out of the other end, while Robin’s glazed cold dead eyes loll against his thighs. 

He is  _ fucking  _ Robin’s  _ heart.  _

_ Fuck. _

He hisses, speeding up. This boy’s  _ heart– _ the very organ that pumps lifeblood through the boy’s body keeping him alive– Robin offered it up to him so beautifully and he’s using it as a damn  _ fleshlight _ , pumping it around his cock in a gross misuse of it, tearing and stretching and ruining this very gift. ‘ _ MINE’  _ glitters up at him. “Good boy, Robin,” he murmurs though the boy can’t even hear. “ _ Such  _ a good boy.”

His heart is  _ tight,  _ not meant to be stretched out like this, squeezing out splatters of blood with each pump, all while the inner valves rub and caress his cock like multiple tongues. He growls, grabbing hold of the boy’s hair and aiming. He won’t be able to last much longer, not with the pretty sight of Robin’s heart stretched around him and Robin’s broken body leaning against him. He comes, splattering white streaks across the boy’s face, slack mouth, and even his eyes, covering the dead blue with milky white.

With a sigh, he pulls out and lets Robin’s body collapse. Disappointingly, the heart is beginning to cool. 

...But Robin’s body is still warm. 

Slade shoves the heart back into Robin’s chest cavity, then continues to fuck it there. He comes within the boy’s heart, filling the blood organ with his seed, then comes again in the boy’s chest cavity, and  _ pisses _ in there too for good measure before finally moving, pausing in the abuse of Robin’s chest long enough for the serum to work. 

He simply spends that time fucking Robin in the ass instead.

When Robin’s awakens, sputtering and gasping awake, Slade is coming in him again, this time in his ass, and swoops down to lay kisses across the boy’s neck.

Robin cries out in terror, confused and struggling, but Slade’s weight above him is unyielding, and he settles down soon enough. Slade forgives him for the slight– he knows waking up after something so violent can be disorienting.

“Am I dead?” the boy whispers.

“No,” Slade croons, cock still stretching Robin open. “You’re with me, as always.”

Tears trickle down the boy’s face, and Slade chases them with his tongue, licking them and relishing in Robin’s pain and sorrow. Slade  _ gleefully _ informs Robin of just how exactly he had been using the boy’s body, and as the stream of tears increase, he makes sure to lick up every single one. 

His sweet,  _ precious  _ boy.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one has less segments but they’re longer. But I had more segments planned, so yes ya’ll will get another chapter. Just one more don’t tempt me plz my finals are coming up *cries*
> 
> This chapter also got kinda creepily intimate in the end? Sorta? Anyway, what I’d like to say is Slade and Dick are married now. The only ring Robin gets is a cock ring I don’t make the rules Slade does if you have a problem fight him


	3. Chapter 3.1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooo this is kinda really late and shorter than the other two chapters... BUT! there's another 10k going up tomorrow!! my hand slipped while writing this and chapter 3 became really really long so i ended up having to split it in two though it's meant to be read as one chapter. I'm not 100% satisfied with the ending, so I'm holding back the rest till tomorrow to give it another read though and see if i wanna change anything. Anyway, that's something to look forward to!

There’s a moment of clarity, as he stares at his master’s –  _ no, Slade’s –  _ body. 

It’s like a breath of fresh air, a burst of adrenaline, and every inch of him, body and soul, is screaming. Warning him, as he hangs on a precipice. His thoughts feel clearer than they have in –  _ weeks – months – years –  _ and he knows, with certainty, this is the last choice he’ll ever have.

Because if he fails, there is not a speck of doubt in his mind that Slade will utterly destroy him.

_ There’s only so much Slade is willing to put up with for his amusement. _

Even so, Robin is so, so  _ tired  _ of suffering. 

Either way, things will  _ end _ right?

And that’s all Robin could wish for.

-/-

He holds himself, shivering under Slade’s feet.

It’s cold. 

The floor is freezing against his bare skin, soaking through his body like it’s tissue. 

He feels a little like that, like a crumpled up piece of trash tossed carelessly into the drain to be discarded. He thinks of it, floating amidst the garbage, neglected and uncared for, inevitably dissolving into tiny shreds and disappearing into the mess that is the Jump City sewer system.

How lucky, to be able to disappear forever.

How lucky, to have an  _ end. _

Slade’s boot shifts, digging into his back, and he bites his lip to keep from making noise. 

They’re heavy, keeping him in place. Keeping him from crawling away. Keeping him right where he belongs. Robin may be trash, but he is  _ Slade’s  _ trash, and Slade will never discard him. No, he’ll simply keep on chipping away at him forever and ever till there’s nothing left, then glue the pieces back together only to break them again.

The thought makes his eyes burn, and he longer has the pride to even try to hold them back. Even if he should be stronger than this, smarter than this,  _ better  _ than this.

He can’t.

Not anymore.

He stays quiet, though, silent tears dripping out of his eyes and onto the floor. He knows better than to draw his master’s ire, at least. Salty fluid pools in front of his face. It’s warm as it drips down his face, almost comforting, like the gentle caress of a finger trailing down his cheek. It’s  _ strange _ , how hot it is, when Robin can feel ice crawling over his heart inside, when his bones are frozen stiff, when his body might as well be a cadaver. He eyes the pooling tears. Would it be as warm if he rubbed his face against it? 

A sigh. “Clean that up, boy.” Slade is irritated, but not enough he feels the need to stop what he’s doing. 

But that could easily change, if Robin didn’t obey soon. Slade’s moods were always mercurial. 

His tongue is dry, he sluggishly pushes it out, obediently licking it up. He has to obey. It does little to sate his thirst.

It’s cold.

-/-

He doesn’t notice when he stops shivering, when his body is so starved of energy that it can’t even be bothered to try to keep him warm. He has no clothes, of course. Clothes are for when he’s been good. And Robin, more often than not, is bad. It’s simply something that’s been engraved deeply into him, and he is so, so lucky that he has such a  _ kind  _ Master that’s bothering to spend so much time fixing him. 

Or so Slade says. Robin tries not to think deeply of it, lest the skepticism slip into his expression and he get punished, again. Punishment  _ hurts,  _ even more than the usual aches and pains.

But there’s not much to do but  _ think,  _ in the quiet of the room where he returns day after day, where Slade has left him for what seems like  _ weeks.  _

Robin is so, so hungry. 

So desperate to eat  _ something _ that he’s even contemplating defying Slade’s order and taking a bite out of his own flesh, even though he knows how much it’ll hurt. How much  _ Slade  _ will make it hurt. Surely, how much could Slade mind, really? He ordered Robin often enough to do it, why not now? 

He pushes that deadly, rebellious thought aside. Whatever punishment he can think of, Slade will make it much worse. Much, much,  _ incomprehensibly  _ worse. 

But he’s so  _ hungry.  _

Surely, just one little bite? Just a little something to satiate the demanding beast in his belly. Slade will punish him – but the future seems so nebulous and murky, all there is  _ now,  _ the hunger. Skeletal fingers come up to his mouth, offering no meat for his jaw to clamp down on, and if he could, he would let out a sob. He can’t, though. He cried and sobbed out all he could early on, and he no longer has the energy for it. 

He no longer has the strength for anything – anything except the pounding, clawing, biting  _ hunger  _ that seems to gleefully gnaw at every bit of his bones and flesh with sharp cutting teeth. His body has already cannibalized most of him from the inside out. 

His hand drops. 

His eyes drag themselves to the door. 

Slade  _ will _ come, any moment, any second, with  _ food _ . The very thought makes the hunger bite even more viciously at his insides. 

Surely, it’s been long enough? Surely, he will cease to be any moment? Surely, he will die the moment after the next? Because if there’s one thing Robin knows, Slade won’t let him die. So Slade must be coming in the next second, for if Robin is to die in the second after the next, Slade will come before that.

So Slade  _ must  _ be coming.

Seconds bleed into minutes coagulate into hours flake into  _ days _ , a moment stretching into infinity.

Slade hasn’t  _ come  _ yet.

Robin, impossibly, hasn’t  _ died  _ yet. 

Robin doesn’t know how long he waits. All he knows is that hunger has consumed him, every part of him, till it’s all that’s throbbing in his head, weighing down his limbs like lead, shredding his insides into a thousand pieces over and over again.

He longs for something to eat.  _ Anything _ . 

If Slade threw another person in here, still living and breathing and hoping and so  _ unlike  _ Robin in every which way, Robin would still sink his teeth into them out of sheer hunger. There should be horror accompanying the thought, Robin knows, but it’s consumed by the hunger, too.  _ Everything  _ is. All there’s left is a sense of floating, unanchored detachment, and a tiny hopeful gurgle for food.

_ Just a bite _ , Robin thinks. One, single  _ bite. _ It’s not like they would die. He didn’t. It’s a moot point, though – no one comes, not even Slade.

Time passes. Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s all the same to him.

He gives in, tries to bite into his arm only to realize, he doesn’t even have the strength for that. He’s too  _ weak _ . Too utterly weak. 

He still gnaws on it, but with a desert dry mouth and his bones practically sticking out, there’s no pleasure in it and all it does is exacerbate his hunger, teasing and tantalizing it with hints of what it could have but refusing to give it over fully. All it does is leave marks, reddened skin that is sure to draw Slade’s ire once he spots them.

He thinks he could die when Slade finally comes in, if dying from relief were allowed. It’s not. Dying as a whole is forbidden to Robin, no matter the method. Slade’s dragging something behind him. Is it food? Robin hopes it’s food. It must be food. 

“Master,” he tries to speak, his voice coming out in a tiny, quiet rasp. He mouths the words, the pleas, and tires to crawl to Slade.  _ Whatever it takes, to  _ eat. 

Slade sighs. “FIlthy animal,” he mutters, annoyance sharp in his voice as he eyes Robin disdainfully. His gaze sharpens as he spots the marks on Robin’s hands, and he snarls. He easily lifts Robin up by the wrist. Robin up by the wrist, shaking him. “What the fuck did you?”

Robin cowers. Fearful, flinching. He shouldn’t have tried to feed. Silly slave, stupid child. Why didn’t he know better? “‘M sorry,” he whispers. “Master, please– I’m sorry– I was just so  _ hungry, please–“ _

“Shut the hell up,” Slade snaps. “One order. A single _order._ It’s not that _difficult,_ boy. I told you not to bite yourself and what do I come to find? _This?_ You disobeyed me, tired to eat your flesh when you damn well I told you not to, because _what?_ You couldn’t handle being _hungry?_ How _pathetic_ can you get?” Slade lets go, letting Robin fall painfully into a tangled pile of limbs. He doesn’t give Robin a moment to adjust, brutally kicking him in the wall.

Robin gags as the force of the blow slams into his abdomen and his back, coughs as something like bile splatters out. How strange. He hadn’t known there had been anything left in him. 

His head spins dizzily, Slade dividing into  _ two  _ and  _ four  _ and  _ two _ again, and he whimpers at the thought of multiple Slade working in concert to tear him apart like ravenous wolves. He closes his eyes. “Sorry,” he says shakily. “Please, Master, I’m  _ sorry _ , please.” He begs, hunger overwriting his survival instincts as words tumble from his mouth without restraint. “I’m just so  _ hungry–  _ Master, please– May I have something to eat,  _ please–“ _

A boot on his neck. 

“I told you,  _ boy,  _ to shut up.”

Slade’s voice isn’t loud, but it doesn’t have to be. Robin shuts up. 

The shivering has started again, Robin notes distantly, curled up on the floor.

He really will die soon, he thinks, if Slade lets him starve a moment longer.

“Get up,” Slade orders, and Robin  _ tries,  _ but he’s too weak, fallen too far to ever rise again. Another sigh, and Slade’s dragging him up by the hair. Robin blinks through the pain, dizzying lights and colors focusing into a singular mass of black and orange. 

Robin wonders when he last had an orange. He can’t remember – not when, not the taste. He wishes he could have one.

Food. Where’s the  _ food? _

Slade unzips – of course, Robin realizes. How ungrateful he is, to dream of eating without servicing his master first. So stupid. He really is as bad as Slade says he is. Stupid, ungrateful. Slade doesn’t have to feed him. He deserves to be  _ thanked  _ for giving Robin this much. Obediently, he opens his mouth. Even now, it’s dry, and cold is still rattling in his bones. He’s gotten used to it, but he’s sure he’s reeking like the trash he is. Fear slithers up to thrum alongside the hunger – would Slade be even able to enjoy him like this? Will he be found  _ inadequate?  _

...will Slade  _ leave  _ him again?

The very thought makes his thoughts  _ wail _ , slamming into each other to create a whirlwind of screeching anxieties and making his head pound ever harder.

Slade’s cock rests heavy on his tongue, and Robin does not for a moment even consider biting down. Despite his hunger. Despite the taste for flesh Slade’s built into him. He knows better. He’s stupid, but not stupid enough for  _ that. _

It’s still soft. 

“Make yourself useful, boy.”

When his mouth fills with acidic warmth, he’s not surprised, instead gratefully, eagerly swallowing it down. It’s hot, burning, filling up his belly and heating him up from inside out and Robin is really,  _ truly  _ grateful. It’s  _ something _ – something warm he can swallow down and for all that he hates the taste it’s still a  _ taste _ . There’s no room for humiliation, because with it comes the promise of something to  _ eat.  _

It’s  _ lovely _ , he thinks, as he swallows him down. He can’t imagine how he ever hated it. In the moment, he can’t imagine ever not wanting it. It’s liquid fire in his veins, caressing his insides and rejuvenating him, and it’s  _ perfect. _

Slade doesn’t remove himself after he finishes, hardening as he thrusts. And it’s okay, because that just means Slade will come, come in his mouth and Robin will have more to eat. More warmth. And that’s wonderful. 

He can’t really suck, with how rough Slade’s being, instead simply tasting Slade’s skin scraping against his tongue like ashes. He can’t really breathe either, breathlessness compounding with the throbbing of his head to take him on a dizzying ride. Robin doesn’t  _ care _ – he doesn’t need air, he needs to  _ eat _ . He needs food. He needs Slade to come in him, over and over, so that he can swallow it down and fill himself up.

Slade pulls him away, and Robin swears his heart  _ stops _ . Slade won’t–?

A hand wraps around his cock, jerking once, twice – Robin leans forward, mouth stretching wide desperately – Slade pushes him down – and then it’s over, come splattered over his hair, his forehead, his eyes and nose and cheeks, but  _ not  _ in his mouth.

_ No,  _ Robin thinks as his eyes burn, despair weighing him. A tongue darts out, hoping for a taste of  _ something –  _

Slade growls, and Robin falls still, despair still etched onto his face.

“DId I  _ say  _ you could eat?” Slade snapped. “That stays. Don’t touch it.”

“Please,” Robin whispers, needing to so badly taste it, before it cools and dries.

With a sneer, Slade replies, “You don’t deserve it, boy.”

And he doesn’t – Robin’s been  _ bad _ , disobeyed Slade. He didn’t even deserve to get Slade’s  _ piss _ . He should be grateful with what he got – instead of hoping for things he can’t hope to have.

But he’s still so  _ hungry.  _

His hands grip each other above his elbows, trying to keep them from scooping up Slade come to lick it up. 

He  _ can’t.  _ Slade said so. 

But he wants to. 

Fuck, how he  _ wants  _ to.

“Don’t worry,” Slade promises, “You’ll have your belly filled soon enough.”

Robin’s cold again. The warmth from the piss and come had faded far too soon, just a temporary reprieve. Slade dragging him somewhere, setting him against the wall. Like a limp doll, Robin is tugged around and set into place. Colors blur and coalesce. Black, orange, black.

A single dot of cold blue, as Slade comes near. 

Slade nudges a thick piece of tube into his mouth, and orders, “Swallow.”

Robin obeys without a second thought. It’s flexible, but not warm. He has more difficulty when Slade’s cock is in his mouth. 

He swallows. It’s disappointingly tasteless. He can’t bite it, so it’s not for eating. Slade keeps pushing more and more into him, till Robin begins to wonder if it’s supposed to be coming out the other end. He swears he can feel all the way down to his stomach. It hadn’t seemed that thick when it was only in his mouth, but now he can tell – it’s big, pressing against every wall of his esophagus. His throat convulses around it.

Slade finally stops, briefly lifting up the funnel on the other end of the tube to his ear to check where the other end is, then attaches it to the pump on a container. 

Dully, Robin wonders what Slade is putting in him this time.

Slade flips on the switch. He must see the question in Robin’s eyes, because the next thing he does is roll his eye and answer, “Orogastric tube. Since you’re apparently utterly  _ starving,  _ I’ve decided to give you all the food you need.”

That’s – that’s  _ nice _ ? And perhaps he should be afraid – nothing Slade ever does is without a catch after all – but all Robin can feel is a shuddering, blissful relief as it fills his belly. He’s gagging around the obstruction in his throat, but his hunger is  _ abating.  _

He tries to give a grateful thanks, but words come out garbled, something like a sob of relief clogging up his throat enough further.

Slade simply watches, standing there with arms crossed as something like amusement flickers in his eyes. He taps a single finger against his elbow, waiting.

And Robin hasn’t eaten in so long that even a handful of bites is enough to make him feel full – and this is quite a bit more than a few bites. He’s filled, quickly, and suddenly experiences a twinge of anxiety as he wonders  _ when  _ Slade will take it out. 

He whines, shifting, as the feeling becomes uncomfortable. He clutches his stomach, swearing he can feel it swelling up, trying to stay steady. He whines louder, a sharp keen of distress. He doesn’t want to give up the food, but his body doesn’t care for what he wants, rebelling against the sudden intrusion.

He gags as a cramp hits, stomach twisting painfully. He has to – he  _ has  _ to take out the tube. He’s too full, too close to bursting. He can’t survive this. 

Hands tug at the tube, trying to take it out, and in a flash, Slade’s there, over him, hands yanking his hands away. “Oh no you don’t,” the man chides. “You wanted to eat so badly, now  _ eat.” _

And Robin wants to listen, he  _ does,  _ he wants to be  _ good,  _ but this is as reflexive and struggling to reach the surface is for a drowning man, and he can’t  _ stop _ . He’s choking, dying, being scattered into a million tiny pieces and he  _ can’t.  _ The tube scrapes against his tongue and the roof of his mouth, mining away at the little pieces of him to make room for this new torture. He screams, futilely trying to push Slade away, only for Slade to comfortably settle over his legs.

“This won’t stop until I say so, boy,” Slade chides, clamping a hand over Robin’s mouth. “Give up resisting.”

Robin sobs, sure he’s going to burst and why won’t Slade just  _ listen –  _

But really, at this point, Slade knows his body better than he does. He waits on top of Robin, watching him cry and beg and breathe out muffled pleas till at last, his struggles finally still. 

He’s full. Too full. He feels a balloon blown up far too much, one touch away from bursting, and still he is filled. Robin’s heart thrums as he wonders if Slade simply intends to stuff him full till he literally bursts.

Slade tugs out the tube with no gentleness before it reaches that point, stepping away faster than he had appeared. 

Robin barely has the presence of mind to turn before he spews chunks of whatever right out, like a fountain out of control. The sight makes him sob. So much food, wasted. It could have kept him feed for  _ weeks.  _ Slade will be angry. What a useless, wasteful child he is. “Sorry,” he whispers, vomit still in his mouth. “I’m sorry, Master.”

Slade clicks his tongue. “Ungrateful little thing. I take the time to feed you, and you throw it all up?” He gives a light kick to Robin’s stomach, triggering yet another round of retching. “Useless,” he mutters, crouching and taking out a gleaming penknife. Robin has felt its touch enough times to know that it is far sharper than it has any right to be. He whimpers, shutting his eyes. Why can’t he ever do anything  _ right? _

He screams in the next second, pain spitting apart his abdomen as Slade slides the knife down. Skin splits, vessels spilt, muscles split, and the food mix spills out. It’s nauseating to look at, and the smell isn’t much better. Robin wishes he would simply cease to be in the next – all that effort for something to eat – and for what? Having it all spill out of his belly so easily.

“Now  _ look  _ at the mess you’ve made, boy,” Slade says, disappointment. “I’ll certainly not be feeding you again anytime soon, if  _ this  _ is to be the results.”

Robin sobs, the thought of yet another period of time without food making his body shake.  _ He can’t.  _

With a tilt of the head, Slade snaps, “Well, boy? Aren’t you going to clean that up?”

Flinching, Robin obeys, dragging himself forward on his elbows and licking at the mess on the floor. The taste is bland yet acidic, almost painful to swallow down. Slade watches him, and Robin is  _ ashamed _ – because, see, he’s  _ glad _ . Because he’s still starving, and something, anything to eat, is better than  _ nothing _ . 

Even if Robin isn’t sure what’s the point – he swallows, only for it to spill right out his stomach, futilely trying to hold it in. Again and again, he eats, and it spills out of him far too easily.

Like an ouroboros – the snake that gnaws on its own tail for eternity out of sheer hunger, forever consuming and forever being consumed. 

A never ending cycle.

-/-

Slade still goes on missions.

He rarely takes Robin anymore, preferring to leave him tied up somewhere, but he usually returns soon enough, none the worse for wear.

This time, though, it’s clear that things didn’t quite go so perfectly. Slade’s bloodied – injured. Robin doesn’t think much of it, at first. Slade is unbeatable, after all. Untouchable. Not even when Slade stumbles, cursing and slumping as he frees Robin from his cage and drags him forward, unzipping. Not even when he notices that Slade didn’t even bother to clean the blood off his sword, and he  _ always  _ does that.

But. As he brings his lips closer to Slade’s cock, his eyes briefly flicker to Slade’s, and his mind _stutters._ Like static on a television, spitting and screeching in pulsing grays. Like the hitch in his breath when he realizes he's too far from the ground to survive falling. It’s like he’s been wading through molasses all the while, like he’s been sinking and sinking, and is only now breaking the surface. Like he’s been fighting Achilles all this while, and is only now noticing his vulnerable heel.

Because – Slade – he looks  _ tired.  _ Robin doesn’t think he’s ever seen him tired, not even after an entire day of continuous fucking. His usually pristine uniform is stained so much with blood, with rips and tears, and Slade – he’s  _ distracted _ . 

... _ weakened _ , he dares to think. 

And Robin – he’s  _ not.  _ He’s in one piece. He ate the last of the food Slade left just this morning. And by now –  _ he has seen Slade use his computers enough that he knows how to get in.  _

And it’s right  _ there _ .

There’s an ocean rushing in his ears, roaring, crashing into him with all the force of a tsunami.

A moment of clarity. 

Robin can run. 

All he has to do is neutralize Slade.

All he has to do is go against his  _ master.  _

Was that even possible?

He hand moves before he’s even fully thought out what to do – moving up to grasp Slade’s cock, stroking, and his lips wrap around the head. Slade’s eye closes in pleasure, relaxing, head tilting back, and Robin watches.

It’s now or never. 

His grip tightens, his heart speeds up, then – _ he rips it clean off.  _

There’s a spurt of blood onto Robin’s face, staining his cheeks and chin, but it doesn’t bother him. He’s gotten used to having blood all over him.Granted, it’s usually his and not Slade’s, but even so.

Slade swears, eyes flying open, mouth opening in a snarl, and still somehow simultaneously utterly terrified and yet, far, far too  _ calm,  _ Robin takes Slade’s cock and shoves it right down his master’s mouth. Let Slade feel what it was like to choke on his ridiculously sized cock for once. 

He’s doing this. Bloody damned  _ fuck,  _ he’s really fucking doing this.

Slade makes a grab for him, but for  _ once,  _ Robin is faster than him. He’s swinging up, legs twisting around Slade’s leg and squeezing tight. His hand’s grabbing Slade’s sword – how many fucking times has that pierced his body? – and then using it to pin Slade’s hand. Slade doesn’t stop trying to dislodge him, but between his injuries and Robin choking him, Robin simply has to hold on, patiently wait till Slade’s body goes slack. 

Blood drips slowly from his face, thick and heavy as ichor.

He waits another three minutes just to be sure, then works quickly, dragging Slade’s body to the table where he tied Robin down so many, many times. Robin knows the steps and sequences for it better than his own  _ name _ , he thinks on some days. It’s… terrifyingly  _ easy _ to strap Slade in. 

It shouldn’t be, should it? So easy to strap in a human being into an instrument that brings so much pain?

But Slade’s not human, is he?

No, he’s a damned  _ monster.  _ Like those spoken of in the myths and fairytales, a creature that kills and destroys and kills until the hero –  _ only  _ the hero – arrives to put down.

He’s about to go for the computer, and then spots Slade’s cock on the floor. It had fallen out in the struggle. Pettily, he picks it, and then stuffs it back in Slade’s mouth. He knows he shares Slade’s regeneration, but there is something so  _ satisfying  _ about about knowing Slade won’t be able to fuck him with it, for however long it takes regrow. 

It’s terrifying, too. He can’t imagine what Slade will do when – no,  _ if –  _ he gets out of it. 

The rush of fear and horror that runs into him at the thought is  _ dizzying _ , and the sight burns into his mind like sacrilege. A temple, desecrated. This is heresy. These are the actions of a heretic. He deserves to be struck down with all the fury of a raging god any second now.

He  _ isn’t _ . 

How, he wonders, utterly amazed at the fact he’s still standing, is he still permitted to live?

Hands shaking, he goes to the computer. Types in the password he has seen Slade type out so many times. Slade had gotten careless, lately. 

He probably hadn’t thought Robin capable of fighting him anymore.

Robin hadn’t, either. Hadn’t even realized how much of Slade’s passcodes and paths and ways he had memorized unconsciously. It’s strange, to realize, beneath all his calls of master, his violent screams and desperate pleas, his subservience and obeisance, there was a part of him still clinging on. Still  _ hoping _ .

Dangerous.

_ You can take the bird away from the Bat, but can you take the Bat out of the bird? _

Unlocking the doors is easy, so frighteningly  _ easy _ that it feels like a paper thin illusion. He should  _ run _ , Robin thinks. Run, leave, never come back. His eyes flicker to the door. He stays rooted to the spot, frozen.  _ No  _ –  _ why? _ – not yet. There’s still – still, still what? The nanobots. His… former teammates. Who had abandoned Robin. Who gave up on him. Who thought him dead. 

Robin had almost forgotten about them.

He should be ashamed… but instead, he’s simply so  _ tired.  _

He doesn’t have the luxury of trying to protect others anymore. Not when he can’t even protect himself.

He still finds the program for the nanobots, but – the controls – where there should be something, there’s nothing. Panic should be creeping in, but all Robin feels is the bland and heavy weight of dread, a far too familiar companion. “Where is it?” He realizes, suddenly, that he hasn’t seen the trigger in  _ ages.  _ Hasn’t seen Slade bring up the program for the nanobots even  _ once  _ recently. 

Did Slade… just kill them, when he realized he didn’t even need the threat of it to make Robin behave? When he realized just how  _ easily  _ Robin gave in to the pain?

Robin really should just run. There’s nothing else he can do now. Before it’s too late, he should–

“They’re gone,” Slade says, far too casual. 

Robin freezes, ceasing to breathe in the moment.

Slade’s  _ awake _ . 

Ah. Is it too late? Was it a mistake, lingering?

His head whips around. Slade’s – the restraints are still on. Slade hasn’t escaped. Yet. 

His dick is back on the floor though. Robin wishes he thought to secure the makeshift gag with something, but he hadn’t. Slades words are a better poison than any acid.

His mind processes Slade’s words. Gone. “They’re dead?” Robin asks, quiet and blank. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. He thinks he’s supposed to grieve, but he was supposed to do a lot of things he’ll never get to do. 

Slade gives him an inscrutable look. “No. But there was no need to keep the bots in them after they declared you dead.”

Oh. Because for what reason would Slade have bots in the Titans and not use them, if Robin were dead? If they were found and traced back to Slade, the Titans might have found Robin. The bots became a liability, so Slade got rid of them, erasing his tracks. 

Robin’s original reason for staying is gone.

Not like Slade needs them to control Robin anymore. 

Suddenly, as he stares at Slade’s face, so calm and immovable, his anxiety begins to build again. There’s no reason for Robin to stay. He could leave. Hell, he could –  _ should  _ kill Slade, because he knows damn well Slade will never stop chasing him. Instead, he stays frozen, stays staring at Slade’s cool, indifferent, practically disinterested face. Slade, who doesn’t even look the least bit bothered at his predicament. 

Like Slade’s still in  _ control _ .

Helplessness builds in his head, heavy as lead. Why can’t Robin just  _ move?  _

It’s right there. The  _ exit  _ is right  _ there. _

But. His hands are shaking. Fuck. Why are they shaking? He should have run. Fuck damn it,  _ he should have run.  _ Why isn’t he  _ running _ , damn it?

Slade arches an eyebrow, as if telling him is that usual dismissive tone of his to get on with it. 

And suddenly, all the emotions that have been wreaking havoc within him like he’s a blender are utterly drowned beneath a wave of something so  _ overwhelming _ it makes him stagger with the intensity of it. It chokes his breaths, makes his shaking fingers clench tight, his lips pull up into the almost forgotten shape of a snarl. It’s been such a long time that he’s been allowed to feel it – any instance, any  _ hint _ squashed so ruthlessly beneath Slade’s boots – that it takes him a second to place it. 

_ Anger.  _

Something that had been so long buried beneath the fear and pain, resurrected. 

Robin’s moving forward before he knows what he’s doing, hand rising and striking across Slade’s cheek with all the force he can muster. Slade doesn’t even grunt in pain, despite the reddening skin. Robin stares at his palm, still shaking, lowers it and raises the other. He hits the other cheek too. 

_ Slade always was so fond of symmetry, hardly ever injuring one side without the other.  _

The thought makes him flinch, take a step back, whole body trembling. He’s not Slade. No matter the serum in his veins, the gold on his bones, the color of his hair. He’s  _ not  _ Slade. He  _ can’t  _ be anything like Slade. 

The anger bleeds back.

“Are you done yet?” Slade drawls, tone bored.

And there it is, his fury, roaring again, like a chained and rabid lion yearning to tear his spectators to pieces. 

“I hate you,” the words spill out, confessed like it’s the darkest of secrets. “I want you dead. I want to make you  _ hurt  _ like you did to  _ me.”  _ The ideas are hazy, not concrete. All he wants is for Slade to feel even a fraction of the pain he put him through. 

...What is he even saying? These are not words that would have ever even been thought of by him  _ before,  _ but he’s not that person anymore, is he?

Slade audibly scoffs. “What? You going to  _ fuck  _ me, boy? Kill me?” He sneers. “You don’t have the guts.”

Robin latches onto it like a lifeline. He should hurt Slade. Kill him. Then run, yes. No point in running if Slade will chase him, is there? He needs to do this.  _ End this.  _ “You don’t know me,” Robin whispers, stepping. “You don’t know me at  _ all.” _

An outright laugh. “I know you better than  _ anyone,  _ boy.”

He  _ doesn’t.  _ He  _ can’t.  _

Because if that’s true – if every little thing Slade’s said about him is true – Robin doesn’t know what he would  _ do.  _

Slade’s pants are already down, from earlier. It’s bloody, too. The balls are still hanging limply, looking disturbingly lonely without the cock between them. His hands rise, grasping them, watching Slade’s face. He squeezes, and it should hurt like  _ hell –  _ Robin would know – but Slade doesn’t even flinch, outright  _ smirking  _ instead. Like he’s superior. Robin can’t stand it, crushing them beneath his fingers and not hesitating before he rips them off too, more blood spurting and staining his fingers.

Slade doesn’t scream, make a single noise.  _ How _ ? How can he remain so composed, so unflappable, so relaxed in the face of all this when Robin always broke down so easily?

_ Because he’s stronger than you, you stupid child.  _

Robin’s hand loosens, dropping the flesh below. His blood stained fingers inch forward, beyond the blood still spurting. 

“Do it,” Slade goads. “If you can.”

He’s going to do it.

He  _ will. _

Hurt Slade, like Slade hurt him.

This is nothing less than what Slade deserves. Better than Slade deserves, because Robin will grant him the mercy of death, because this is a mere fraction of all that Slade has done to him. This is necessary, this is justice,  _ this is right. _

It  _ has  _ to be. 

But – 

This is where Slade has tied him down and torn him apart so often, where Robin will do the same to him. All Robin can think of as he looks at Slade is every single time  _ he  _ has been there, every time he’s suffered and been hurt. 

His breaths are a little too fast, hands too clammy and still shaking. His shaft is in his hand, blood from Slade’s wound staining the tip. It’s soft, despite his fingers stroking it. It should feel good, but all he feels is numb. Like there’s something fundamentally  _ missing. _

All he has to do is press in, and then – he’ll have hurt Slade, like he hurt him. He should be feeling righteous anger, not  _ horror _ . He should be feeling elation, if anything, not _ disgust.  _ He should be feeling pleasure, not this disquieting  _ emptiness.  _ There should be giddiness flooding his veins, not bile crawling up his throat.

Robin wrenches himself away and vomits up what little he had eaten in the morning.

Slade scoffs. “Pathetic.”

Robin closes his eyes and bites back a sob, because he knows he  _ is.  _

He can’t do it. 

Not because it’s  _ morally  _ wrong or because he’s a good person that can’t imagine hurting another like he’s been hurt – though the disgust is certainly there – but because Slade has  _ conditioned  _ him far too well too even become hard unless Slade demands it. The mere thought of fucking another instead of being fucked, of sticking his dick in something instead of having yet another instrument of torture shoved up his ass under Slade’s skillful hands sends a wave of queasiness through him. It’s fundamentally  _ wrong,  _ like Slade has engraved it into his very soul.

He dares to think of Kori, bright eyes and vibrant hair, soft lips on his own. It should feel him with warmth, but instead it makes his skin crawl. A ruined creature like him, close to  _ her?  _ Yeah right. The only one willing to put up with a broken creature like him is Slade.

...What did Slade do to him? What has Robin  _ become? _

All his anger bleeds out, leaving him quiet and empty. Robin is just as terrible as Slade, now. A monster in human flesh, deserving of nothing. Even so...

He gets up. 

Fine. 

He can’t hurt Slade.

Enough is enough. He simply wants things to end. Just kill him and get it over with, then.

Numbly, he picks up Slade’s sword.

Kill Slade. Kill his master. Be  _ free. _

Slade sneers. “What, are you going to stab–”

Robin runs him clean through.  _ Left fifth intercostal space, directed slightly upwards.  _ And Robin is familiar enough with Slade’s naked body to know exactly where to strike.

For the first time, there’s a look of shock on Slade’s face, like he can’t believe Robin had the guts to that. Robin, doesn’t, either, but the sword is still there as proof, struck through Slade’s heart. He’s stabbed Slade again – this time from the front.

He feels dizzyingly sick.

Slade laughs, blood splattering.

Robin flinches, hands slipping as he stumbles back. The sword stays, accusing.

“I hope, boy, if you want me to stay dead you know you’ve got to do better than  _ that.” _

Robin thinks of all the things he has regenerated from, all the times Slade has refused to let him die, and  _ understands _ . For Slade to die and stay dead, Robin will have to destroy him, completely and utterly. Kill him, cut him apart, burn him to the bone and grind him down to ash. 

The phantom smell of burnt flesh, nauseating and sickening cloying, fills his nostrils and Robin gags once more, hand pressed to his mouth as he swears he feels his flesh sizzle.

_ No.  _

Even if it’s to the monster that has no qualms about doing so to him, Robin  _ can’t.  _ If he has to handle another second of burnt human flesh he’s certain he’ll collapse like a puppet with its strings cut. 

...and that means he can’t kill Slade, either. 

So what  _ can  _ he do, if he can’t take revenge, can’t kill Slade? What’s the point of running, he thinks as he slides down, shaking and trembling, if Slade will only track him down and make it hurt all the more when he finally catches him?

Because Robin holds no illusions – no matter how far he runs, no matter what distant rock he hides beneath, Slade  _ will  _ inevitably find him.

...why did he even try to fight? Why did he have to stupidly  _ fuck  _ things up?

Robin gets up, and forces himself to turn towards the door. 

Even if it’s inevitable, Robin has to try. He  _ must  _ try. Perhaps, even, he will be lucky enough to die and be cremated before Slade finds him.

“You’re not going to get far, boy,” Slade calls out, soft and dangerous, and at last, with those words echoing in his head, Robin breaks into a run.

-/-

It’s not a solution, it’s not the answer. He’s heard those words repeated so many fucking times, on so many talks and videos and posters. And it’s true. It’s not a solution – but it  _ is  _ an  _ end.  _

An end to this fucked up situation, to waking to pain again and again, an end to the pathetic creature he’s become. A beautiful promise of eternal sleep, of rest, of  _ peace _ – but one that Slade never allows to be kept.

“Why?” He asks dully, when he wakes after he’s gouged out his wrists, with his forearms still stained red.

Slade tuts at him, making a disappointed noise, scolds him for making a mess. He’s punished, of course, by having his skin flayed off inch by inch, all the while Slade calmly ignores his screams and explains how to properly skin someone alive. “You’re my apprentice, boy. I won’t have you practicing such sloppy technique.”

Slade doesn’t answer his question.

“Why?” He asks again, after he thought he had bashed in his head against the wall so hard his brain had to turn to pulp. Robin fears the punishment that is sure to follow, but he fears the  _ eternity _ of it never stopping more.

Slade frowns. “I hope you’re happy,” he says disapprovingly. “You ruined your hair dye.” The thought of white makes Robin panic, but not as much as it used to. He’s gotten used to being Slade’s. He’s punished again, this time by having his skull cracked open, like he’s a fucking cadaver. The sound of the hammer pounding against the pick, circling his head, his skull, and the sickening sound as Slade pulled the top of his skull right off, Robin will  _ never _ forget. Slade did it right like you would in an autopsy. Robin can only dream of being that  _ dead.  _

Slade still doesn’t answer his question.

“Why?” Robin begs to know, when Slade sets his bones back in, after he hangs himself. Slade sighs, then proceeds to break his neck again; carefully, so that he’s just paralysed neck down instead of dead. His hands encircle Robin’s neck, choking him until he passes out again and again as Slade comes in him over and over again. Robin wishes he would simply snap it properly and leave Robin for dead.

_ Still  _ no answer.

“Why?” Robin pleads, after Slade oh so carefully pieces him back together after Robin gets crushed between machinery. “You got blood all over and fucked up my equipment, brat,” Slade snaps, and Robin knows he won’t get an answer today either. Slade spends the next few hours dragging screams out of Robin as he oh so carefully tears apart the body he put together, and when he inevitably gets tired of the noise, Slade takes a knife and drags it across Robin’s throat, silencing Robin for however long till his healing factor kicks in. Robin closes his eyes and dreams of nothing but darkness of  _ sleep _ , the closest he can get to his desire. 

How beautiful it would be, to go to sleep and never wake up, never dream. Just eternal sleep. 

“Why?” Robin begs, crying, after Slade stitches his head back on after Robin didn’t move quick enough to avoid being decapitated by Slade’s sword. There’s punishment, yes, but no answer. 

The worst thing, Robin thinks, is that he notices Slade’s not even that mad about the attempts. He’s amused, if anything. Like he knows there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of Robin ever managing to get away from Slade in any capacity. 

“Why?” Robin asks, sobbing and pleading. “ _ Why, damn it, why?”  _

There is no answer.

It doesn’t end.

No matter how many times he tries, over and over and  _ over,  _ it’s never over. 

It never  _ ends.  _

He learns, the hard way, that death  _ isn’t _ the end, that Slade won’t  _ let _ it be the end. 

He stops trying soon after.

Nothing changes.

-/-

His eyes look down at him, accusing. Each pair that Slade pulls out is more tainted than the one before, with the most horrifying of all being the ones still in Robin’s body of course. 

He doesn’t like it, when Slade fucks him here, among all the pictures and blue eyes staring down at him. Judging him, asking him why he hasn’t  _ done  _ anything to Slade yet.

As if he  _ could. _

He’s on the floor, face down, staring into a mat, soft and pliable, stitched from his own skin and painted in a vibrant mess of orange and black. His body aches and he hurts all over and his back  _ burns  _ and he wishes Slade would just be  _ done  _ already.

But today, it seems, Slade is taking his time. 

When he enters, without stretching or lube, it’s as painful as always, accompanied by the tearing of skin that slickens the way with blood. But instead of the usual jack hammering like a rabbit on steroids, Slade is more languid, lazily taking his time. 

Robin shudders, feeling how the drag of Slade’s cock splits him open, opening up his inner wounds. He’s never ever quite healed properly there, unless Slade goes on a mission and decides not to stuff something back there to keep him entertained. Robin thinks Slade likes how he tightens up again when he’s gone, just so he can brutally loosen him up again with his cock. It  _ always _ hurts. 

Hands clench on top of his skin, and his eyes blur, but even so – this is  _ better.  _ Because he doesn’t have to look around, because he only has to look down, down at his flesh separated from his bones, but this is still  _ better.  _

A hand curls in his hair and jerks his head back as Slade slams in, deigning to hit right over his prostate, and Robin  _ keens.  _ His cock, so far limp, gives an interested twitch. It’s learned to find pleasure past the pain Slade gives him, simply because it is so rarely given to it. 

“Enjoying yourself, pet?” Slade asks, and this is the sort of question Robin  _ hates. _

If he says yes, he will be punished. If he says no, he will be punished.

There is no right answer.

He lets out a low moan instead, and hopes that it is enough. 

Slade slams his head down, grinding his skull down onto painted skin as ruthlessly as his cock grinds into Robin. “Answer me, boy.”

“Y–yes, master,” Robin stutters out, head spinning, blood dripping down his hair.

“Really?” Slade drawls, falling still with his cock still in Robin’s ass. “Then why are you  _ crying,  _ boy?”

Robin’s breath hitches as he realizes the warmth on his face isn’t only blood. He cries so often, really, it’s hard to tell when he starts and stops. “S-sorry,” he stutters, frightened. “I’m sorry _.” _

With a sigh, Slade’s flipping Robin onto his back, painted skin scraping against inked skin, meeting his scared wide eyes. “Sometimes, boy,” he says with disappointment, “I don’t think you appreciate all that I’ve done for you.”

He shakes, daring not to speak, daring not to look away. 

“Take a good  _ look,  _ boy,” Slade orders, tilting his head around.

Robin doesn’t want to. But he  _ must.  _

“Look at yourself, boy. Look at all that you  _ are.” _

Photographs hang up of Robin in various positions and states. _ Fighting. Bleeding. Crying. Begging _ . With his too small mouth stretched obscenely wide around Slade’s enormous dick, drool and other fluids slipping out the corner of his mouth, teary eyes and flushed cheeks. Piss raining down upon his hair, slipping down his neck and shoulders and into his open mouth and pooling down to his feet. Collared and leashed and hands bound behind his back, ass sticking right up to show the obscenely large dildo spearing him open as his tongue lapped up a mess of come from the floor. His face caught in a twisted mess of pleasure and pain, a sword up his ass but his cock hard and coming anyway. Come splattered on a blood slick back torn apart from whipping. Robin, eyeless, limbless, toothless, but mouth open and drooling nonetheless like the whore he is as Slade fucks into him. And so many, many, more. 

“Nothing more than a pathetic little whore, needy and hungry for cock. You were such a useless creature, pet, but I made you into something  _ useful.  _ Even trash has its use… and I showed you yours, didn’t I, my pretty little slut?”

Robin knows Slade is looking, too, and getting aroused by it, because his cock twitches with excitement within Robin.

“Aren’t you  _ glad  _ to have been given purpose, pet?” 

More than his cell, where he is locked away so often, more than the throne room, where Slade fucks him so often,  _ this  _ is the room Robin reserves his loathing for. 

Photos aren’t the only thing here.

“To have found your place in serving something greater, in serving your  _ master.” _

Tiny sculpture and figures and tools, all carved from his bones, hanging down from the ceiling. His eyes, suspended in little jars of fluid, scooped out from his skull time and time again, staring at him unblinkingly. Dead, but still  _ watching _ . Judging, it feels like. Robin wonders, if the him of before could see him now, could see all that he is, would he take a knife and slit his own throat in horror before Slade could give him the serum? Perhaps not… he had so  _ loved _ his friends. 

They are but distant memories now, when all he can focus on is the sensation of Slade’s cock spearing him open and pounding into him again and again. 

“You’re a pathetic, worthless, disgusting piece of  _ trash _ , pet. But at least by serving as my toy, my cocksleeve and cum dumpster, you get to be at least a  _ little _ useful, hmm?”

And then, there are the rugs. The wall scrolls. Where the canvases are Robin’s skin. Sometimes, Slade is kind enough to scrape his skin off before he does the inks. But most of the time… Slade inks it directly onto his skin, waits for it to heal, then lovingly rip it off. 

“You should be  _ grateful  _ for everything I’ve given you, you stupid boy. Apologize for your ungratefulness and  _ thank _ me.”

Being in this room is being reminded of every torture, every moment spent under Slade’s blade, a history of Robin breaking time and time again. With remembrance comes the fear and phantom pains, and all Robin wants to do is  _ run _ . Run so far and hide from it for all of eternity. He  _ hates  _ it.

He opens his mouth and thanks his master. “I’m sorry for being a stupid, ungrateful child. Thank you for teaching me my place, master.” His voice is bleak, but Slade seems satisfied with it, finally starting to fuck him. 

“I want you to look at every picture, every object,” Slade says, squeezing his shoulder, “and thank me for doing it. Do you understand, boy?” 

Robin shudders, and feels his eyes burn. “Yes, master.”

“Then  _ start.” _

Slade’s cock assaults his body, playing havoc with his insides and Robin speaks, words like burning embers in his mouth, being exhaled as choking little clouds of ashes. 

“T–thank you for b–burning me a–alive, master.”

His cock is rough, scraping his insides as balls slap lewdly onto Robin’s cheeks.

“Thank y–you for branding me with your m–mark, master.”

Slade hums, adjusts, and Robin gasps and wishes he didn’t because now he’s hitting Robin’s prostate with pinpoint accuracy and Robin’s getting hard.

“Thank you f–for letting m–me come on your g–gun, master.” 

His words stutter as he becomes unfocused, too distracted by Slade cock, but he dares not to stop, doing his best to say the words even as the sensations build. 

“–for d–drowning me–“

Slade can always go a while, and this time, he seems determined to draw it out. 

“For f–feeding me my flesh–“

Robin comes with a cry, but Slade doesn’t stop and he sobs as oversensitivity builds but Slade doesn’t stop so Robin can’t, either. 

“–f–for f–fucking me with your b–boot–“

Slade comes, but not a second later he’s hard  _ again,  _ and not stopping and squelching our come and blood as he hammers in and so Robin must continue on.

“F–for ch–choking me a–and shocking m–me–“

He’s crying again, though he’s not supposed to, because it’s just  _ too much.  _ Why can’t Slade ever  _ stop? _

“–for moving m–me when I h–had no limbs–“

Slade grunts as he comes again, finally, blessedly falling still.

“–for fucking me and filling me up with your come, master.” Robin finishes, tired and weary and utterly limp. Is it over? 

Slade’s cock hasn’t left his ass yet, though blood and come already drip out. “And what have you learned from all this, slut?”

“...that I’m  _ yours _ ,” Robin says, heart quickening with the fear of answering wrong. “That I belong at your feet, on your cock.  _ Wherever _ you want me – that’s my place.”

“That’s right,” Slade says approvingly, cock slipping out and letting come and blood practically splash down and ruin the rug. It’s a pain to scrub out, but Slade can easily replace it, so it’s fine. “You’ve learnt something, at least, boy. You’re  _ mine _ . Utterly and  _ only  _ mine.”

Robin tried not to think of how many times Slade has shown him off, pinning him and displaying him in the background in a conference, how many times Slade has had someone over in this very room and negotiated with them while Robin sucks him off or bounces on his master’s cock, cheeks burning as he feels the others gazes burning into him. Some even asked for him, and he’s grateful that at the very least, Slade hasn’t handed him off to other people. Yet. 

“Yes, master.” The words ring hollow, but Slade doesn’t care. 

Slade’s turning him around again, tracing fingers over his back. Robin suppresses the urge to shudder, to lean back into it. He doesn’t know if he fears or craves Slade’s fleeting touch.

“Well, this has healed nicely,” Slade muses, sounding hungry. “Time for me to take it off, I think.”

There’s the  _ shick  _ of a knife unsheathing, and then it’s there, slicing off his skin. Robin stays still, teeth gritted and tears falling from the pain, but he dares not move. He reminds himself to breathe. He wonders why he bothers. 

Slade’s careful, separating the skin from the underlying fat and blood and bone with precision. Wouldn’t do to have his art ruined, after all.

Robin  _ really  _ wishes Slade had a better hobby. Even being used as literal  _ target practice  _ and being pumped full of lead would be better than this room.

The slick sound of his skin peeling off adds to the orchestra that plays hauntingly in his nightmares.  _ Drip _ ,  _ drip _ , goes the rivulets of blood slipping down his back. If he’s lucky, if he gets to eat, if he gets to  _ sleep,  _ the skin will regrow in soft, pink layers when he awakens. If not… Slade doesn’t care for the rest of his body while he fucks him, so he’ll just be fucked.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Slade asks, holding the freshly freed skin in front of Robin’s eyes. Blood drips down the back to Robin’s knees. 

Robin stares. It’s a robin, in a cage. Slade’s feeling poetic, today. That much Robin understands. What he doesn’t is why the door of the cage is  _ open _ . Why ink it like that? Why isn’t the bird locked in? Why wasn’t the bird flying away, if the door was open? Was Slade going to leave him?  _ Sell him? _

Robin doesn’t understand what Slade’s trying to say  _ at all.  _

He shivers, a sudden chill down his skinless spine. 

“Cold, pet?” Slade asks, flicking away what was probably about to become his newest wall hanging. 

“Yes, master,” Robin says meekly, averting his gaze to the floor. He’s always cold, nowadays, and the blood loss, comparatively light as it is, doesn’t help.

Humming in consideration, Slade gets up, before coming back with a folded something. 

“Since you’ve apparently managed to learn  _ something,”  _ Slade drawls, dropping it in front of Robin. “You can have a blanket.”

Robin stares at it. It’s made from his own skin, of course. Letters peek out at him. He grasps it, opening it. He recognises them.  _ Slut, whore, piss bucket, toy, pet, property,  _ and so much more. Some from the time Slade decided having the words branded in his bones wasn’t enough, and branded them on his skin too. Then of course had to quickly flay Robin alive, because he couldn’t have the wounds healing now, could he? Others, tattoos. All taunts, reminding him what he is.

His hand clenches. The inside is soft. Lined with some sort of fur. It’s going to be warm, but every single damn time he wears it, he’ll have to face the words too.

“What do we say, boy?”

Robin swallows thickly. “Thank you, master.”

And he is – because ugly though it may be, it’s  _ warm  _ and the words? They’re merely the truth laid bare. 

-/-

The halls are empty, and Robin doesn’t stop running, skidding and falling and getting up in the same seconds. He has to get out. He has to. He  _ must.  _ He will run and never stop. Run until he leaves everything that  _ is _ Slade behind and breathe in everything that Slade is  _ not _ , till he reaches the sea or a chasm or a fire and  _ throws  _ himself into it, because it has to end.

_ Please. It has to end.  _

“Let this end,” he begs to a deity he doesn’t believe exists.

No more.

He runs till with numb fingers he types open the code for  _ the  _ door. The  _ last  _ door _.  _

It opens – and Robin collapses, breathing hard, before he can take a single step out. He knows he shouldn’t, that he should continue to run, but he can’t help it. It has been so, so long since Slade let him out, no longer even taking him out on missions. He hasn’t seen the outside in forever and a day.

His eyes burn, and he blinks back tears. He forgot how bright the day was. How blindingly warm the sun was, cheerful heat soaking straight down to his  _ bones.  _ And the  _ sky _ . Was it always so frighteningly large, stretching into infinity like that? He sees the treeline in the distance, grass stretching between it, so, so  _ vibrantly _ verdant. They’re green – like Kori’s eyes. Like Beast Boy. His breath hitches. Was the world always so frighteningly  _ big _ ?

The chirping of distant birds beckon him forward, but Robin  _ can’t  _ move – suddenly sick to his stomach.

The world is too beautiful, untainted. 

If Robin were to step out, it would become stained. Such beauty doesn’t deserve to be marred by Robin. Who the hell does he think he is, to think he can lay a single foot upon it? To think, after all he’s done and everything he’s become, he deserves to die free?

...but he  _ wants.  _

He  _ aches  _ to step out, to dip his bare feet into the warm grass, to spin around in circles beneath the sun, to flip through those tree tops, to reach for that infinite sky just like those birds, flying and flying till he crashes and is erased. He wants so badly it  _ hurts.  _

“Move,” he whispers to himself. “Just  _ move.” _

He can’t move.

What was he hoping for? That Bruce and the Titans would just take him back? Bruce already kicked him out once, and he’s only fallen further since then. The Titans would know with a single look that he is ruined, broken, undeserving of their kindness. They would know, irrevocably, that he was  _ Slade’s.  _

...But even if it’s only for himself, Robin  _ wants _ . A taste of freedom, just once more, before he dies. Even if Robin knows, deep in his bones, that he will never be free of Slade. That he is haunted, every moment, every second by Slade.  _ He still wants. _

So why does the mere thought of stepping out, of being alone, undesired and forgotten, make his body go cold and his heart  _ freeze _ ? Why does it feel like all his insides are being scraped out and leaving him entirely empty? Why does the thought of a single day, a single  _ hour _ without Slade makes his bones shake and  _ scream _ out in warning? Why is he folding in on himself, gasping in pain? 

There’s something in him, in every crack and crevice, in every hollow and gap. A gnawing void, an  _ emptiness _ .

...oh. Robin understands. It’s him. It’s his fault. He’s  _ nothing _ . Slade has spent too long plucking out pieces of him and filling it up with his own, that it’s those pieces are the only things holding him together. Robin has nothing. Robin is  _ nothing _ . Slade is his  _ everything _ .

Without Slade, there is no reason for Robin to function, and every inch of his body knows it. 

_ A conditioned response _ , a desperate part of his mind tries to insist, but is drowned. He’s too tired. The anger was invorigating, but it’s gone now, gone with the horror at what he’s become. He can’t fight. Doesn’t have the strength too. 

Robin falls, blank understanding spreading through him. He  _ can’t _ survive without Slade. Wouldn’t know what to eat, when to sleep, when to breathe, what to say, what to wear, when to go or stay or what to do. Without Slade, Robin is paralyzed. Everything he is belongs to Slade. Even if he says it’s just for a little while, just to die, just to  _ end it,  _ he  _ can’t.  _

He can’t run. Freedom is an illusion. Death is temporary.

Slade never lets it end. He’ll always find a way to bring him back, because Robin  _ belongs  _ to  _ him. _

Robin stares out the birds, fluttering and blue. They’re beyond him.

Everything is beyond him, except for Slade. 

Robin waits, heart thumping dully in his chest, watching the clouds pass. Colors of the sky darken. Time blurs as he shakes and sobs and  _ weeps. _

Slade arrives.

Robin lies there, collapsed on the threshold between freedom and captivity. He lies there, looking blindly at the warm sky and playful clouds and lush forests and everything he’ll never have. He was such a  _ fool _ . Such a  _ damned  _ fool.

Sladejust looks at him, observing quietly without even a single kick, like he knows what’s going through Robin’s mind – like he knows Robin’s too broken to ever leave.

Robin doesn’t look back at him. Trying to engrave this last image of a glimpse of freedom into his mind. In the distance, he can hear the birds singing. It’s too beautiful to be real. Music is too beautiful to be real. He hasn’t heard any in forever and a day.

For a while Slade doesn’t say anything, as if waiting for him to do  _ something.  _ Run, or beg, or perhaps even go utterly insane and try to bash his head in. Robin does nothing, idly trying to memorize the shape and colors of the clouds, wondering why Slade hasn’t sliced him into tiny little pieces yet. At last Slade says blandly, “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Robin gives a slow nod, a barely there tilt of the head. He waits.

“I hope you remember it,” Slade says conversationally, still in that bland, disinterested tone. “You’re not going to see much for a long, long time.”

Still, Robin doesn’t speak.

“Do you understand, boy?” Slade asks, light and almost gentle.

Again, a tilt of the head.

“Good.”

And unbidden, the question comes tumbling out, spilling and pouring and making a mess. “Why?” 

“Why  _ what?”  _ Slade at last answers.

At last Robin turns to look at Slade. “Why  _ me?  _ Why  _ this?  _ Why keep hurting me over and over again? Why even bother with this pretense of apprenticeship when all you do is  _ torture  _ me?  _ Why?” _

Slade laughs, soft and amused. “Because I want to, kid. And I  _ can,  _ so why the hell shouldn’t I?”

Robin just looks at him blankly. 

“You’re a delight to play with. A delight to  _ break,  _ over and over again,” Slade admits, looking down at him, an almost fond expression on his face. “After all this time, you’re still fighting, however pathetically. You’re  _ amusing,  _ Robin – and you’re  _ mine.  _ I’ll do with you as I please.”

Robin realizes, with a start, that it may be the first time Slade has ever called him by name in the entirety of this mess, outside of the hair dye days. It was also probably the last. 

“You’re so cruel,” he whispers, looking away. 

Slade snorts, and doesn’t even bother to grace that with a reply. 

A bluebird, inquisitive and curious, lands close to Robin. It’s brightly, blindingly,  _ blue _ . Like Robin’s eyes were, once upon a time. Now, when he sees them, they’re dull and dark and lifeless. Not a hint of blue in his eyes.

The birds chirps, tilting its head to look at him, hopping closer. And closer, and closer to his face. It’s not afraid at all. 

Robin wants to touch it. He wonders if he could. If he’s allowed to. If he can hold it without it becoming poisoned with all that Robin is and dissolving into dust. He’s so, so tired. The bird is so innocent, so small, so  _ beautiful  _ – Robin wants to touch it, that  _ purity,  _ be a part of it, if only for a moment. 

He doesn’t notice the way Slade’s eyes narrow, irritated. He doesn’t notice until it’s too late – when the sword has come down and stabbed clean through the bluebird. Blood splatters onto Robin’s cheek. The corpse twitches, once, then falls still.

“Damn birds,” Slade mutters crossly, irate. “They get everywhere. Fuckers.”

Robin stares at the corpse, unblinking. That could be him – if only Slade were  _ bored _ of him. 

Slade sighs, his mood disturbed, and Robin knows Slade won’t allow him to just lay here any longer. Sure enough, he’s picked up. It would be nice, that Slade’s carrying him somewhere instead of dragging him around as usual, but Robin’s sure Slade will make up for it soon enough.

“Come on, kid,” Slade says, voice almost a croon. “Time to break you apart, again.”

Robin shudders.“I was never going to escape you, was I?” he whispers, voice laden with despair.

Slade chuckles. “Never. I had my eyes on you long before you came to Jump, boy.”

So there never really was a choice. It was inevitable, in the end, that he’d end up like this. 

His vision blurs, and he closes his eyes. The bluebird’s corpse floats in the darkness. It had seemed so bright, so full of light, unafraid and unashamed, bringing him  _ hope _ – but it was a lie. It fell all too easily to Slade.

  
In the end, he thinks, all his hopes, his dreams, his  _ happiness _ – everything was but a fleeting illusion, as short and impermanent as that bluebird’s life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember to tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of this epic saga! whee!!!


	4. Chapter 3.2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, bawling my eyes out cuz it's ending :(((  
> this updated yesterday, too, so be sure to check that if you haven't yet!!

Robin hadn’t been fast enough. Hadn’t moved as fast as Slade had wanted, had spent a second too long on the floor, contemplating death, and now, he’s paying.

If he can’t use his limbs to move, he doesn’t deserve them. Or at least that’s what Slade says. 

So he must _burn,_ like a witch at stake, for his crimes.

He knows the smell of burnt flesh. Of burnt bone. He knows how much it’ll hurt. He’s terrified. 

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m _sorry I’msorry–“_ a constant litany of apologies falls from his lips.

Slade looks at him coolly, unanswering. It was simply Robin’s luck that he had to delay when Slade was already in a bad mood. He’s shaking, as Slade straps his arms and shackles his legs to a stainless steel metal stand, pulling them all apart. 

“Master, I’m sorry – please, I won’t do it again – I promise _please–”_

Slade pours hot glowing embers over his feet. 

Robin yells out, already feeling the burning, shrieking, pain. “ _I’m sorry! Master!”_

“Don’t make me gag you, now, boy,” Slade snaps. 

Robin shakes, biting his lip, trying to stay quiet, but it hurts too much, the pain just building and building and _screeching,_ demanding attention. 

He’s distracted, though, as Slade holds up what looks like a gigantic blowtorch up to his arm. He whines, high and frightened and shaking. “Please,” he chokes out quietly, eyes shuddering shut. 

Slade flick it on.

“AHH!” Robin is screaming, screaming so, so _loud,_ trying in vain to break free, to escape the sheer _heat,_ but there is _no escape._

His eyes are open, unintelligible babbles falling from his lips, the pain in his legs utterly eclipsed by how his arm is _melting._

The fire is _in_ him–

_Eating_ away at all his layers–

Skin, fat, fascia, muscle, bone, _marrow–_

_Nothing_ is spared, everything is burned to ash and he is naught but _dust–_

It has to be a lie, what he’s seeing has to be an illusion. Because how can his arm still be in one piece, still be together, when the heat is reaching in to cook his very _bones?_

“No more no more please no more master _please–”_

He remembers, vaguely hearing it can take hours to cremate a body. Sick to his stomach, Robin wonders how long it’s been. Surely, it’s already been hours. Surely it’s been days. Surely, _weeks,_ because Robin _can’t_ comprehend living with this pain a single second longer. 

It has to end. Surely, he’s going to die of this? Surely– surely– _surely–_

He just hopes he dies _soon._

Slade turns up at the heat, and Robin watches, as he screams soundlessly, voice already withered hoarse, his skin waxed and blisters and splits, revealing the charred meat beneath. 

That nauseatingly sickening smell of burnt flesh hits him, finally reaching his forebrain through the pain, and Robin gags, spewing bile and water over the glowing embers at his feet.

“Dirty boy,” Slade mutters scathingly, the words burn in his mind in an altogether different way than in his arms.

_Everything_ is burning. 

Robin can’t bear to look away, no matter how the sight sickens him. His arm’s spasming uncontrollably, but it’s dying out as the muscles chars and black flakes fall down. It still hurts. Everything hurts. 

Eventually, as Robin barely hangs on, even his bones crumble. 

Slade shuts off the torch, Robin’s arm gone all the way up to his shoulder, leaving behind a blackened mess and ashes on the floor. Robin sags, whimpering and keening because it _still_ hurts. This is why he hates burns. They _never_ stop hurting. 

“Drink,” Slade orders, tilting up his chin and holding a bottle against it. “Wouldn’t want you to die from dehydration quite yet.”

Ravenously, Robin obeys, unable to care that all it's doing is prolonging his torture. 

“Have you learned anything, pet?” Slade asks.

Robin shivers. “To obey. Immediately, master.”

“Good,” Slade says. “I’m afraid to make sure the lesson really _sticks,_ we’ll have to repeat it, again–“ He touches Robin’s remaining arm. “–and again–“ Dual taps on Robin’s legs. “–and again.” A playful flick against Robin’s cock. “But hopefully I won’t have to repeat it after your limbs grow out again, hm?” 

Robin’s face drains of all color. Once wasn’t enough. To go through that, again? _Why_ is he even still _alive?_ “P–please…”

Slade tilts his head, eye narrowed. Dangerous. “What’s that boy? You think you need a repeat after your limbs grow back?”

Robin flinches violently. “ _N–no_ , m–master–“

“Then _shut up_ and take your punishment, you worthless creature,” Slade snaps acidly. 

Robin shrinks back, cowering in the face of Slade’s anger. “Yes, master.”

Robin’s very throat is in shreds, coughing out blood, by the time it ends. He can’t tell how much he begged or what he begged for – Slade didn’t hear a single word of it, relentlessly tearing him apart. 

He can’t even move, hanging suspended entirely from the straps across his chest. 

It has to be over.

It _must_ be over, or else Robin will go entirely mad.

“Still with me, boy?” Slade asks.

In response, all Robin can offer is a sad, pained gurgle. 

Slade laughs softly, amused. “Don’t go falling asleep just yet, pet.” Slade gives him another drink – saline, probably – and then takes him off the stand. He drags a gloved finger through the ashes, smearing it on Robin's cheeks and drawing patterns on Robin's chest with it. His body flares weakly with the pain of the heat. Slade finishes with a hum, satisfied. "Now don't you look pretty?" 

Robin looks down, exhausted. _Whore,_ it's written there. Of course. Why would he expect anything else?

Slade fucks him next, bouncing Robin on his cock like he’s a toy. Slade _liked_ the entire thing, it seems. It’s rough and fast, but Robin can’t be bothered to mind. He’s tired, miserable, in _pain_ , and just wants this to end as soon as possible. The quicker Slade is the quicker this ends.

Soft pants are pushed out of him with each thrusts, and at last, Slade cums.

Usually, Robin can appreciate the warmth it brings, but he’s had enough of fire and heat today. He slumps.

“Not _yet,_ pet,” Slade chastises. “How are you going to pay for me wasting my time on you, hm?”

Robin stiffens. It’s – it’s not over. _No._

He twists. Where is Slade taking him?

His eyes land on a large, long red dildo fixed onto the ground. Correction. A large, long, _flaming red_ dildo fixed the ground.

He panics, spine twisting and head shaking and desperate little wheezes escaping his mouth, but Slade only _laughs._ His pathetic attempts get him nowhere. 

Robin shudders, tears falling, already feeling phantom pains flare up. “Pleaseplease _please–“_

“Hush, pet,” Slade says soothingly in a mocking tone. “Don’t talk back – unless you’re looking for more punishment?”

Robin shuts up at that, unable to comprehend what else Slade will burn away from him. 

And though Robin desperately presses against Slade, trying in vain to cling to him, he fails, Slade easily pushing him down. 

He shrieks himself bloody again as the hot metal touches his rim, swearing he hears his flesh _sizzling_ from the heat. Like a steak. Atop platter of his agony and tears, purely for Slade to feast on. He arches, trying to escape, but there is none. Slade drags him down, down, down, till his cheeks touch the floor and the entirety of the heated dildo is in his ass. 

Wailing, he rocks back and forth trying to get off, but gravity does a too good job of holding him in place. 

Slade pats his head. 

He sobs, pain wreaking havoc on his already wounded body. This is how it feels, to be cooked from the inside out. Feverishly hot, sweating rapidly, skin melting and getting stuck to the intruding object. 

And it’s not small, either. Robin can see the bulge in his stomach, the way it’s hard to breathe because it just goes so deep.

“Do try to obey promptly next time, hm? Then perhaps you won’t have to go through this again, boy,” Slade says, and then, as always, leaves.

_This is hell,_ Robin thinks, at last, just before the darkness of blessed unconsciousness takes him away.

-/-

“Are you hungry, boy?” Slade asks, flicking open a penknife. It clicks open, then shut. Open. Shut.

Robin’s eyes flicker. There is no food in sight. His eyes lower. He swallows, feeling his heart thud dully in his chest. “Yes, master,” he answers, voice barely more than a whisper. 

The hunger in him aches. 

Slade never feeds him enough for him to ever feel sated.

Robin _starves_ , and Slade _gluts_ himself on Robin’s agony like it’s a delicacy he can’t get enough of.

Hands clench behind him, nails digging crescents into his palms as he resists the urge to wrap them around his stomach. He hopes Slade will feed him soon. Surely, if nothing else, he can’t find fucking a skeleton fun? Then again, it _is_ Slade.

Slade hums, low, considering. Condescending. 

“What makes you think you _deserve_ this, boy?” Slade’s voice is neutral, but Robin’s not fooled. He doesn’t dare look up.

“I don’t,” he says, soft and quiet as he can make it. He steadies his breath. He’s kneeling at Slade’s feet, but even so, he sways. _Weak._ “I don’t deserve anything.” Once, he could have shouted that he didn’t deserve any of _this –_ the cruelty, the starvation, the humiliation _._ Once, he wouldn’t have dreamt of ever begging for food like this, proudly refusing to even _think_ of it. He shudders. Now, he can’t bear to think of _that._ “But even so, master. Please…” His eyes blur, and he slumps, in between Slade’s legs. “I’m sorry. I haven’t done anything to earn it. I don’t deserve any kindness. But master, _please.”_

He’s so hungry. Black runs across his vision, and he pitches forward. 

Against Slade, he realizes as his eyes clear up again.

His body freezes, sure that Slade’s angry, that he’s about to get hit, but all he feels instead is the weight of Slade’s hand on his head. It doesn’t stay, just a brief pat telling Robin it’s okay for him to lean against Slade’s legs. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, but he can’t move. Not when Slade is so warm against his tired body. 

“Your hand,” Slade orders, and, like a marionette, Robin meekly lifts it. 

The penknife that Slade had been flipping so idly flipping presses against his wrist. 

Robin’s breath hitches. “Master?” He asks, timid. _Scared_. 

Slade’s lips quirk. “You’ll be fed,” he says, amused. 

The knife doesn’t leave his sight. His mouth is dry. He knows where this is going. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes he could take back his words. All his words. But he knows Slade too well to hope for mercy. 

A thin red line appears on his wrist. 

It’s a scratch that barely stings, but it makes him rapidly blink his eyes anyway. 

It’s a preclude, not the main event.

“Thirsty?” Slade offers in a light tone, like he’s not– he’s not–

Robin’s eyes finally flicker upward, wide. Words clog in his throat. He doesn’t know what to say that can get him out. There is _nothing_ he can say that will get him out.

Blood glints off the knife Slade holds in front of his lips. 

It’s not a choice, not really. He _must_ obey. He opens his mouth, catches the drop that falls off. It burns against his tongue. He swallows. 

The warmth lingers. 

Slade shifts the knife so that it’s held horizontally, and Robin obediently leans forward, letting slow, kittenish licks clean the blood off. 

It’s a delaying tactic. 

Like if he entertains Slade enough with this, Slade might deign to not make him suffer. The thought almost makes him laugh in its absurdity – Slade would never _not_ decide to make him hurt.

He still watches, peeking out above between eyelashes. Slade’s eye never leaves him, and Robin doesn’t dare hold his gaze for more than a split second.

The knife shines stainless all too soon.

Slade brings it back to his forearm.

_No mercy_.

Not from Slade.

His wrist is coloured with tiny red rivulets, from the earlier cut. It’s _jarring_ , almost unfair – how spotlessly clean the blade is next to his marred skin, even though it was responsible for the cut.

_It’s not fair, how utterly unmarred and clean his master is next to his ruined body._

It was just a scratch, the cut already clotted and well on its way to healing, but the next isn’t – it’s deep, cutting down his wrist and forearm vertically.

The way Robin would cut, if he were trying to die. 

Not that it would work.

He’s tried.

And anyway, Slade knows his body better than he does, with how many times he’s cut him apart and put him back together. The cut avoids his artery. It digs into meat instead. It hurts. Slade isn’t gentle. As if cutting into someone and scraping out their flesh could _ever_ be gentle.

His eyes blur, and he has to bring up his other hand and bite his knuckle to stifle his noises.

It cuts, again and again.

Fingers pry his own out of his mouth. His knuckles are red, and his mouth is filled with a slight coppery tang. His arm throbs and burns in pain, and he doesn’t dare look at it. 

“Poor thing,” Slade tuts, looks at his bloodied knuckles. “You must be positively _starving.”_

He is– Slade holds something against his lips, something wet and warm that Robin _can’t_ look at– but not for _this_.

His head presses back, trying to lean away as far as he can, but all it makes him do is lean further against Slade’s thigh. And Slade so easily pushes him forward, pressing _it_ between his lips.

His teeth remain stubbornly shut, even as a whimper escapes, but it’s useless. 

Slade _always_ gets what he wants.

“Eat,” Slade orders, voice still light, but tinged with a hint of tightness. He’s getting impatient.

Robin’s mouth opens, the meat slipping easily in. All he tastes is blood, the heat of his flesh like a furnace, the urge to gag nearly overwhelming, but he pushes it down. Slade won’t like it if he does. He likes the tears though. The way Robin never fails to _cry_ , is never able to make himself stop after he starts. It drips down, dull heat on his cheeks. Maybe a little slips into his mouth too, but if it did, he wouldn’t know. 

The salt of his tears are utterly drowned beneath the iron of his blood. 

He chews obediently on the end, but his flesh is tough, and not easy to bite off. His jaw moves sluggishly, and even the clawing of his belly is not enough to give him strength. Dread pools and mixes into the blood already present in it, bubbling in acid to create a truly awful burn. Slade wants him to do this, so he must. 

If he doesn’t – if he _fails –_

It’s enough to give him a burst of energy, to bite harder to break down the broken pieces of himself.

_Till he’s naught but dust._

It’s not enough. He tries to swallow anyway, only for it to get caught in his throat and send him into a coughing fit that he frantically tries to stop only for it to intensify the more he tries to suppress it. 

Slade clicks his tongue in disappointment. 

_No,_ Robin prays. He can’t afford to disappoint Slade. He covers his mouth with his other hand, shutting his eyes, and forces himself to swallow down his own flesh. It tastes like failure, like the rawness of desperation, like molten iron being poured down his throat and all Robin wants to do is throw up but he _can’t._

It’s funny, isn’t it, how Slade keeps tearing off bits and pieces of himself, breaking him apart, just to feed him the broken shards to build him up again? It has to be– amusing for _Slade_ , that is, otherwise he wouldn’t keep doing it. 

“Ungrateful little thing,” Slade sighs, withdrawing his hand as he flicks the bit of flesh somewhere. “You dare to refuse the food I have so graciously provided for you?” 

He _wasn’t,_ can’t comprehend how Slade would even think him capable of disobedience, and yet, he knows protesting will only make it _worse._ He feels his heart clench, ice cold terror freezing his bones and making them rattle. “I’m sorry!” He blurts out, blood still staining his teeth and strands of nausea inducing _something_ stuck between them. “I’ll do better, master, please…” He pleadingly raises his hand, blood sliding down to the crook of his elbow. He can’t disappoint Slade. He _can’t._ A sob escapes him. “I’ll be better, so _please…”_

He’s regarded with that same, so cruelly cold eye. Disinterested, as if weighing whether to indulge Robin or not is something that he can’t be bothered with. 

He wonders, sometimes, fleetingly in the furthest corner of his minds because those types of thought are the ones that get him _hurt_ , how Slade can appear to be so detached, bored of all this when Robin _knows_ that Slade drinks up his misery and suffering like it’s a taste he can’t get enough of.

“Go on, then,” Slade says dismissively, but makes no move towards him. Robin flinches, unsure of what Slade wants. “Take a bite,” the man prompts, and it dawns on Robin what he wants.

It makes him queasy, just to think about it, but that doesn’t stop him from bringing his hand toward him. Slade will find a way to make things worse. Obedience is better. 

His teeth sink into flesh, and it hurts, and it’s impossible to chew and he loathes the taste, but Slade smiles, pleased, and isn’t that enough?

-/-

He hated the white hair at first, he remembers vaguely. Blamed his pain on it. Hated how he couldn’t recognise himself with it. He thought that if his hair was black, like before, Slade would treat him like before. Gently. Carefully. Like he’s _fragile_ . His body was improved by the serum to take so much, but his _heart,_ his _mind,_ his _soul…_ they were as fragile as ever. 

He wonders, now, if he was wrong. If Slade prefers him with white hair, with his symbol undeniably etched onto his body instead of Robin futilely trying to hide from a truth they both knew but which before had scared Robin senseless to admit. 

Slade’s hands are already in his hair by the time Robin works up the courage to ask – but _anything_ to gain a scrap of Slade’s approval. 

“Master?” He asks timidly, voice quiet. He doesn’t have to be afraid of Slade now, he knows, but the fear never leaves. Ever present, creeping, waiting. 

“Yes, pet?” Slade asks, voice relaxed.

“Do you prefer my hair dyed o–or white?” He stutters as he asks, but manages to finish asking.

Slade quirks an eyebrow. “I thought you liked your hair dyed,” he remarks instead of answering.

Robin swallows. “I like whichever master would prefer.” Which isn’t a lie. Let Slade choose. Let him decide Robin’s fate. There’s no reason for Robin to cling to a relic of a half forgotten past – unless Slade wishes otherwise, of course.

Slade laughs, a low chuckle. “I don’t care,” he replies, tilting up Robin’s face to look him in the eye. 

There’s a predatory smile on his lips that makes Robin heart speed up, even if Slade has never hurt him during this time before. He’s sure Slade can sense his fear, judging by the way his smile widens. 

“You see, pet,” Slade explains, fingers rubbing his scalp soothingly, like he’s trying to calm down a frightened animal. That’s all Robin _is_ to Slade. “It doesn’t matter because either way, black or white, you’re still _mine.”_

And that, Robin supposes as he melts in Slade’s grasp, is an absolute truth.

-/-

Slade carries him back to the throne room. Robin is too tired yet to feel afraid, but he knows he should be. He clings instead, to everything that gives his life meaning. To _Slade_ . Face pressed against Slade’s shoulder, hands thrown around his neck. Breathe in everything Slade is, trying to fill up those hollow spaces within him. Let him be _consumed_ , utterly and entirely, by Slade, till there is nothing of Robin left.

He tries not to think about what it means that Slade is allowing him this comfort after all Robin did. After all Robin _tried_ to do, only failing because all he is a pathetic, useless little whore. 

He’s crying again, silent and shaking, soaking Slade’s already bloodied uniform.

He doesn’t know why. Maybe he’s grieving. Can you grieve for yourself? For something that hasn’t happened yet but inevitably will? For dying, again and again, piece by piece? 

With a press of Slade’s foot, a panel opens up, revealing a chamber Robin hadn’t even known was there.

“Please,” the plea escapes him, even though it shouldn’t, clinging all the tighter to Slade when Slade goes to put him down. He doesn’t want to be alone. He wants to stay, because he _knows_ that without Slade, he is _nothing._

“You need to be punished, pet,” Slade chastises, but is still gentle as he pries Robin off.

Robin shakes his head, grasping onto Slade’s hands. “It’s not that.” He knows he can’t avoid punishment. He tried to run. He deserves it. He doesn’t want it. But it’s not that.

Slade sighs, but is remarkably indulgent with him today. “What?”

He forces the words out before he can rethink. “Please end me,” Robin begs, voice cracking. “Please.”

“I’m not _killing_ you, boy,” Slade says sharply, with an edge to his voice that lets Robin know perfectly well he’s getting irritated. Robin is Slade’s after all, and how rude of Robin to dare to ask someone to destroy their belongings?

Robin flinches, frustrated at being unable to make Slade understand. “I don’t mean that,” he says, averting his eyes from Slade’s own. “I just – I can’t exist like this anymore. I don’t want to fight you, day after day. I _can’t_ go on like this, Slade. Fighting and resisting and trying to convince myself that I’m _something_ when I know damn well I’m _nothing_ . So if you’re going to break me, Slade, stop playing around and just break me _completely._ Crush me. _”_ He looks up, trying to convey the sheer desperation he’s feeling through his eyes. “ _Erase me, Slade.”_

Slade’s staring at him again, his hold loosening. Robin clings all the tighter. 

Slade says that it’s amusing when he fights back, that he likes it because he can crush Robin again and again, but Robin doesn’t know what he has to do to get Slade to _understand._ He can’t keep trying to hold himself together like this, he can’t he can’t _he can’t._ He’s not asking for a physical death, but something more vague and intangible. An erasure of his whatever remains of his _ego,_ his self. Having to fight _hurts_. He doesn't want to hurt anymore. He wants to give in to Slade, completely and utterly. There's comfort, in the surrender. “Please,” he says, quiet and hollow. “I’m going mad, I’m already mad. _So please_.” 

Slade has taken even the possibility of _freedom_.

The _escape_ of even death.

If Slade denies him this… he tries not to think of it.

Slade is still quiet, eye narrowed thoughtfully. 

“You don’t have to have to dye my hair anymore,” Robin whispers. “Don’t have to give me the illusion of having anything that’s my own, don’t have to give me comfort you don’t care for and piece me back together.” And it _burns_ to say that, to deny himself that, but now Robin sees it for what it is. 

A lifeline, reaching down to the depths of hell, offering Robin that poisonous _hope._ Keeping him together. Keeping him living, day to day, for that one bit of kindness and false love. But it’s as deceptive as a spider's thread, crumbling and sending him sprawling back down to hell every time it snaps no matter how he clings to it. 

And like a fool, everytime he fell, he had madly scrambled up again, eagerly awaiting that next glimpse of the spider’s thread.

No more. 

No more _illusions_. 

No more of this slow, drawn out death. 

“So please,” Robin begs. “Just _end me.”_

At last, as Slade’s eye focuses on him, his lips twitch. Slade laughs, low and soft, and pulls Robin forward. In an embrace. “Oh, Robin.”

It’s warm, here in Slade’s arms. Comforting. He could spend eternity like this.

Robin thinks Slade hasn’t understood what he was trying to say at all. “Please,” he whimpers, crying. 

“Sometimes,” Slade says, clear amusement shining through as he rubs soothing circles on Robin’s back. “For being such an intelligent child, you can also be so delightfully stupid.”

Robin doesn’t understand. All he sees is Slade trying give him comfort when Robin knows it’s a lie, Slade not _listening_ to a damn word Robin says. 

He should have known.

Why would Slade ever listen to something like _him_?

“I’m going to punish you. I’m going to _hurt_ you, boy,” Slade says, holding Robin together when he doesn’t want to be held together but is too weak to even dream of denying. He tilts Robin’s face up and looks down upon him. “Whether or not you still ‘ _exist’_ at the end, however, is up to you. If you want to end… simply _accept_ your place, Robin.”

Robin doesn’t understand. All he does is cry and cry and cry, a sobbing mess in Slade’s arms. Slade waits, cradling him till the tears at last die down. He wishes Slade would just hurt him. He doesn’t understand – is _terrified_ by – this sudden kindness.

A kiss upon his head. _Soft_. 

And Slade’s words, as he lowered him into darkness.

“You’re _mine_ , Robin. _Accept_ that… and you _will_ end.”

Robin has no choice but to believe him.

-/-

In the beginning, despite the cold, despite the dark, Robin succumbed to the type of exhaustion that comes with bawling his eyes out, and fell asleep before he could truly understand where Slade had put him. 

When he wakes, he isn’t sure if he’s still asleep, because all he sees is black. 

He blinks, again and again, but it’s still dark. Experimentally, he tries to move, only to fail. Shackles bind his joints, preventing him from moving an inch. He goes still.

It’s quiet. Quiet enough he can hear his own breaths, his own heartbeat. His own thoughts scream at him, but he’s alone. 

Slade has left him here.

It’s okay, he tries to tell himself. Slade has left him before. But in a cell, usually. Not… this. Not buried under the floor, shackled. …Slade _buried_ him, the thought realizes. Buried him alive without even putting him in a coffin. 

Has Slade had enough? Was that escape attempt the last straw? Has he finally realized he had no need for a useless deadweight whore like Robin? Did Slade leave him for _dead?_ To die a slow death by starvation?

_Please, no._

Robin doesn’t know which is worse – the hours it takes for flames to consume his flesh or the weeks it’ll take for his body to consume itself. 

His eyes sting.

Why? If Slade grew so tired of him, why couldn’t he just make it quick? Just _end_ it? Why did he have to be so _nice_ at the end?

_Just another spider’s thread._ Another false hope. Maybe he enjoyed watching Robin’s face light up as he promised to grant his plea, just so he could laugh about it later, at the sheer gall of Robin daring to think Slade would listen to him. Tears fall. Maybe Slade is even laughing about it now, counting down the minutes to his death. 

But no, Slade said he _wouldn’t_ kill him – so maybe Robin has just been put away instead? To languish in the dark for however long till Slade becomes bored and decides to bring him out to play. Perhaps Robin would end up sleeping away years in here, forgotten and dusty. Perhaps Slade would even pick up another apprentice, and Slade would use him as a cautionary tale about what happened to worthless whores. He’d bring Robin out – just for a _glimpse_ , a second and not a second more – then he’d be put away again. Robin doesn’t know why he’s breaking out into outright sobs at the thought, but he is.

No. 

He shouldn’t lie. 

He knows why.

Because he is _nothing_ with Slade – utterly purposeless, directionless, useless, _worthless._ Slade is his everything. And when you take away everything, there is only nothing, and that’s what Robin _is._ How frightening, to drift without a purpose, to be forced to exist when you have no meaning, to be pushed to move forward when you are blind and senseless. 

Slade is so, so _cruel_ , to force him to _live_.

Slade is his master.

“Slade,” he whispers, in quiet despair, the sound echoing. “Master.”

There’s no reply, save for his own echo. He’s alone.

Until he isn’t. There are skittering, chattering sounds now. Robin doesn’t know what. “Master?” He says softly, afraid.

He can’t see. 

He doesn’t know what it is. 

The chittering increases, echoing and thumping and eerily high.

“Slade?” He says louder. The sounds, they’re closer now. They almost drown out the thump of his heart beat. 

...he doesn’t think it’s Slade.

“Master, please,” he tries, as his breath hitches. There’s no reply, save for a sudden brush against his naked skin.

He shivers, suddenly hyper aware of how cold it is in here as chills race up his spine. It’s cold, it’s dark, and he’s naked and bound. He has no idea what’s in the dark with him, what horrors Slade had seen fit to subject him to. 

A whimper escapes him as he feels another brush.

He’s never been afraid of the dark – not when he was a child and his mother was teaching him the stars and his father how to start a fire, not in the shadows beside the vibrant lights of the circus, not of the monsters that hid in the dark alleyways of Gotham because he was nine and _invincible_ and monsters may chase humans but _he_ was the creature chasing down the creepy monsters.

But with Slade, he’s learnt to be afraid of _everything –_ and he’s afraid now. He was not chasing, but rather bound and helpless prey for any monster that came across him. He had no illusions of invincibility, no partner nor parents nor teammates to run to, only himself in the here and now and he was _nothing._

He shrieks outright as something – _teeth, tiny and small but sharp –_ clamp downs on the meat of his thigh. It jerks back, tearing the flesh of Robin’s thigh with it, and there’s a sharp flick against his knee. 

_Rats._

Slade put him in here with _rats._ Rats that had no problem with eating human flesh, it seemed. Slade didn’t even want to deal with the punishment of such a useless creature himself, instead leaving it up fucking _man–eating rats._ Robin doesn’t know why he isn’t used to the horror by now. He should be. 

After all that he’s _done_ and had done _to_ him, he should be. 

There’s more than one, Robin realizes, feeling fur flicker against his neck, his shoulder, his chest, his leg, his thigh. They were probably scared off by his noise, but they’re hungry, too, Robin guesses. They won’t leave him alone for long. 

He screams as they bite into him, and they hesitate, but don’t delay for long, tearing into him ravenously as they realize for all his screams, he can’t do shit to fight back. 

“MASTER!” he calls out, screaming and shrieking as loud as he could. He’s scared, _alone,_ and in pain, and it _hurts._ No matter what new pain he experiences, it never hurts any _less._ Maybe it’s because Slade tears off or burns off his nerves so often, and each newly grown one is as sensitive as a newly born child. Or maybe simply because Robin is _weak_. The outcome is the same. It hurts.

“Slade, please, make them stop!” He begs for Slade, his _master_ , again and _again_ , because he doesn’t know what else to do, and tiny teeth rip away his flesh piece by piece meanwhile. They spare nothing, nibbling off his ear, gnawing on his fingers, on his toes and limbs. And sure, Robin’s been made to eat his own flesh before – but not like this. Under Slade, it was bite by calculated bite, strip by strip – not this mad frenzy of clashing teeth all over his body.

One lands on his stomach, heavy and big, sniffling at his chest before biting down on a nipple. He _shrieks_ ever louder, the skin there even more sensitive, and the rat carelessly rips it off. His chest heaves with hurried breaths but the rat persistently clings on, doggedly feeding on the flesh of his chest. And it’s not the worst, because then a pair discovers his crotch and the soft, sensitive flesh there. 

Robin got the feeling that Slade was about to get his revenge very, very soon. 

He was right, regrettably, for once, as they bit down. He screams, again, but no one but the chittering of the rats, echoing and violent and _savage_ , answer. They rip and tear, going into a frenzy, stripping away flesh piece by piece all the while Robin yells. And slowly, quickly, his dick and balls are torn right down to nothing. There’s another, gnawing at the rim of his asshole.

And there’s nothing Robin can do but whimper in pain and _take_ it. 

He’s no longer calling out for Slade. 

He knows his master won’t come unless he wants to. 

The eating frenzy has slowed down, and Robin thinks the rats are almost done by now. The ones at his right arm have gnawed all the way down to bone, so Robin isn’t what else it wants to eat. He’s tired. Surely, the worst must be over by now? To the rats, he must have been a _feast._

Then the rats start sniffing around his forehead. 

Quickly, he shuts his eyes, but not fast enough. They bite down, clawing at his eyes, and Robin struggles what little he can because his eyes may be useless in the dark, but – even so – _if_ Slade comes back – even if it’s just for a _moment_ – how will Robin know if he can’t _see?_

“ _Don’t_ ,” Robin begs. “Don’t!” 

They don’t listen, of course. His eyes are ruined. He won’t know, anymore, if it’s dark or light. He shivers, a quiet, hiccuping sob escaping him.

The skittering rustles and thumps disappear, eventually.

The rats are gone, now, but Robin’s sure they’ll return when they’re hungry. And Robin will still be here. Stuck. Unable to leave, forever just a source of food to fucking _rats._

He cries, cries for what he has lost, cries for what he is, for what he can’t be, cries because he is _alone_ and Slade and _left_ him to the _rats._

_..._ For so long, Slade has been the only other living thing to touch him. And now, the rats, biting and poisoning and dirtying him further. He cries, because he’s sure this means Slade doesn’t want him. Couldn’t want him, with all the filth on Robin’s skin and in his blood. He’s _ruined_ , too much for even Slade to touch him. Only good for the rats, now. Why else would Slade let something else touch him when he hasn’t ever before? _Why?_

Robin doesn’t understand Slade at _all._

He cries himself to sleep again, chasing vividly colored clouds in his dreams. It’s a beautiful escape.

He wakes up to the shock of ice cold water on his face – almost to his nose – he sputters and takes a deep breath before he is completely submerged. And he says completely submerged, because he can _feel_ it – the ice cold water pressing down on all sides of him. He’s utterly helpless, shivering, lungs burning with need for air. He’s _drowning. Slade_ is drowning him. Whether it’s part of a system of wherever Slade put him or under Slade’s direct control, Robin doesn’t know, but here he is, _drowning._

There’s only so long he can hold his breath, but Robin tries. Tries and tries, but at last the pressure build up is too much – in his lungs and on his chest – beating against every part of him, demanding to be _let in –_

He just can’t handle it anymore.

Ice cold water in his nose, his mouth, burning and stinging and filling up his lungs with blistering pain and he can’t _breathe_ and what even is _air –_

He fights to stay conscious, trying futilely to move to reach a surface that doesn’t exist and then, and his head spins and he chokes and his throat _burns_ – trying to scream, to plead, but no sound escapes and all the enters is unrelenting _water_ – and just at edge of where Robin is sure he will die – 

The water falls, and Robin sputters as he breathes. Once, and then twice. Greedily taking in clumps of air like it will disappear. 

He stays gasping, for a while, sleep chased away. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He doesn’t know what he did, but he must have done _something_ to warrant that. He just wishes Slade would _tell_ him what.

He stays awake, shivering in the cold and dark, afraid of the rats, of Slade, of water and fire and everything in between. 

It’s only after the third time that Robin tries to go to sleep only to face a rush of water _and_ a shock strong enough to make him scream himself bloody that he understands. Slade will not allow him to sleep. Every time he tries, he will _drown_. 

_Sleep_ is not allowed.

There is _no_ escape – not even in his dreams.

-/-

Sometimes, Slade likes to bring Robin out, when he’s still asleep and Slade hasn’t deigned yet to awaken him through flooding the chamber with water. Tear streaked face, chunks of flesh missing, pale and ghostly – not at all helped by the growing white of his hair. 

Slade will admit, he has particular fondness for fucking Robin when he’s asleep. He likes it when Robin fights back, yes, but if that is the spice, this is the _sweetness._

So pliant, so soft, so still – like a _doll_. Vulnerable and helpless, as he always is, but now even more so. Innocent, looking even more like a child. Even his hole is looser than usual. Slade sinks in with a groan, enjoying how utterly relaxed Robin’s face is. Usually, he never gets to see the boy like this, and while he relishes in the boy’s fear, this, too, is nice.

He goes slow, languid, taking his time. He doesn’t plan on letting the boy see him so early on, but why does that mean Slade should deprive himself? It’s simple enough to fuck the boy like this. 

Not his usual cup of tea, but it has its charms. Slade can appreciate different flavours. 

It’s why he appreciates their little off days, too. Robin may be under the impression that it’s some elaborate scheme, but truth be told, Slade simply enjoys taking care of his things. A sword never sharpened dulls to uselessness, a gun never cleaned will explode in your face – it’s simple math. Slade prefers his shit to last, and so, he takes care of it. He was careful not to indulge Robin too much, though, lest he start thinking he _deserved_ it. 

Pity that Robin doesn’t want his hair dyed anymore, but Slade must admit, the idea of it pleases him.

Yet another symbol of his ownership. 

Slade hums, Robin’s walls twitch sporadically around his cock, and lifts Robin's hips up as he grinds down. He comes, then starts again. His libido won’t be satisfied so easily, after all. He comes twice more, and pisses in him too, for good measure. 

But come and blood and piss and slipping out now, and because Slade is an asshole with no self delusions, he proceeds to plug up Robin’s hole with food. Cheese, berries, the sort of shit rats eat.

The thought of Robin’s terrified expression upon waking up to having rats sticking their faces into his ass has him chuckling. It’s going to be hilarious. 

Perhaps he should stick some more creatures underneath? Roaches and small snakes, he decides. He could leave the boy’s ass open with a speculum, or hooks and a strap, and put in some honey or sugar, and the next thing Robin would know, snakes and roaches would be playing havoc inside his ass. Oh, how the boy would _shriek._ His lips twitch. 

Slade’s already stuffed his pet’s ass full of cheese today, though. 

Next time, he decides.

Not like he plans on dragging Robin out anytime soon. It is supposed to be a punishment.

They have time, and with all the ideas floating around in Slade’s head, he doubts he’ll even get bored of his boy anytime soon. 

_Yes,_ he thinks eagerly, _next time_.

-/-

He's moving, Robin suddenly realizes. He panics, unable to tell if he's falling or rising, unable to _see._

“Master?” he rasps uncertainly as the sudden vertigo stops, coughing. He can't see, doesn't know where he is, doesn't know what's happening, or even _who's there-_

_"_ I'm here," Slade's low baritone answers, and Robin sags in relief, the pace of his heart returning to normal. He cranes his neck as such as much he can to where he heard the voice, orienting himself to Slade like the sunflower does with the sun.

“Do you want to be good?” Slade asks, voice suddenly coming from his other side.

It takes a moment to register the question as Robin frantically turns. He swallows. “Please,” he breathes. He doesn’t want to go back, back under the ground, where it’s cold and he’s alone except for the rats and the thoughts that scream in his head.

Slade hums, considering. “Then stay quiet _,”_ he says, and then he quite casually stomps on Robin’s foot. Blinded, Robin isn't even capable of seeing it coming. The crack is sharp, and Slade doesn’t stop at that, grinding his boot into Robin’s broken limb.

It takes a moment for the pain to hit, but as it does Robin can’t help but scream out loud, only registering Slade’s order after he runs out of breath. He was supposed to stay _quiet._ He wasn’t supposed to _scream._ He disobeyed Slade. The horror of it makes his very bones rattle.

"Tch," is Slade's disgusted response, boot still grinding down.

“No,” he keens sharply, distressed.

“I think,” Slade says sharply, as he removes his foot, “You need to spend some more time in time out.”

“No, please, _master–”_ Robin tried desperately to jerk up but he’s still there, restrained. He sobs, beseeching an unmovable mountain. “Please, – _Slade –_ master, _please_ , don’t leave me – please, _I can’t–_ I’ll do better I promise – _please–”_

Slade doesn’t even listen, and he is lowered back into the cold and the dark without mercy. 

“MASTER!” Robin screams himself hoarse. “Please – _I’ll be good,_ I swear – just don’t leave me, please – _anything,_ I’ll do anything I promise so please...don’t leave me…don’t abandon me… please...” 

Slade doesn’t answer. 

Robin sobs himself to unconsciousness.

-/-

In the dark, with rats still gnawing on his bones, the thought strikes him: _this is his own fault._

If only he listened. If only he were _good._ If only he _obeyed._

He could be up there, instead of locked back down here. 

This is all _his_ fault. 

Robin needs to be better. For Slade.

-/-

Robin is shaking, woken up through painful shocks. Nowadays, sometimes drowning isn’t even enough to wake him up. Tremors run through his body. His eyes, thankfully, have healed enough. They’re heavy.

It’s bright.

His heart pounds.

Slade is here. 

He comes back, sometimes. Robin doesn’t know why he bothers to come check up on a worthless creature like him.

“Do you want to be good, boy?” Slade asks.

“Yes, master,” Robin answers instantly. He knows the game by now. He wants sleep, too, but that is not allowed. He hasn’t earned that right yet. 

Slade smiles indulgently. “Feel free to make noise, pet.”

“Yes, master.” And then scalding hot water is being poured all over his body, and he is twisting, shrieking, begging for forgiveness and apologizing for his sins. 

It feels like an eternity in a moment. It feels like a blessing, like all the dirt and filth is being washed away from his skin with the water. Each time, burning away more and more of him. 

Slade crouches beside him, freeing a hand and examining it. There are still some chunks missing from the rats, but Slade finds it satisfactory enough. “This time,” Slade instructs, “No noise, no movement.”

“Yes, master.” Robin clenches his teeth and curls his remaining hand into a fist. His eyes squeeze shut in anticipation. He knows what comes after.

Slade smiles, all sharp edges, then breaks a pinky. Tears spring almost immediately to Robin’s eyes, but he forces down the scream. No noise. He wants to be _good_ , and good means _no noise._ No begging, no pleading, no shouting, _nothing._ Be _nothing._ For his master.

They're all broken, one by one, then, as he finishes, he graciously allows, “You can speak, now.”

Immediately, Robin starts sobbing outright, the pain of the broken fingers hitting him. Teeth unclench, jaw aching; fingers uncurl, twitching in sympathy and fear.

Slade sets the bones back in place, Robin’s shrieks getting louder with each one. Slade gives it almost a soothing pat before he straps it back in place and freeing the other one. “Stop crying,” he orders lazily, and with one last blink and force of will, Robin does. 

A pen knife is pressed into Robin’s hand. 

Robin freezes, hesitant, eyes still red and fingers still aching. It’s the first since he ended up _below_ that Slade’s given him a weapon. Robin doesn’t want to disappoint him. 

“Carve something into yourself,” Slade says at Robin’s questioning look. “Anything.”

Robin blinks, looks at his shaking hand, and brings the knife to his chest. He doesn’t have fine coordination to write fancy words right now, so he doesn’t. Instead, he drags it as carefully as he can, in a shape he is all too familiar with. 

Slade laughs as he sees the curves ‘S’ of his symbol bloom on Robin’s chest, and the twinge of anxiety in his chest lessens. Perhaps, even, Slade will let him sleep for a few hours after this. 

“Good boy,” he says, amused.

Robin dares to ask, but still small and timid, “Will you do my back, too, master?” 

Slade smirks. “Not a bad idea.” He flips Robin around, and then digs into his back with the knife. His hands are steady and smooth, and hits deep, right to the bone without hesitation. Slade doesn’t stop after the first time, widening the lines with a few more cuts. It’s deep, and Robin suspects it’ll bleed for quite a while. But that’s okay. It’s another mark of Slade’s ownership, another promise not to forget. 

It’s… _comforting_.

Slade hums. “Maybe I should tattoo this entire thing onto you.”

Robin agrees. “That would be nice, master.”

Slade flips him back, and gives his head an absent ruffle. 

The action, though comforting, leaves a sense of disquiet in him. “Master?” he ventures.

Slade quirks an eyebrow at him. “Talkative today, aren’t you? Well, speak up.”

“Why… why do you keep coming back?” he asks. “I’m just… I’m nothing. I don’t understand why you _care.”_

“Because you’re mine, silly child,” Slade says with roll of his eyes. “I take care of what’s mine.”

“Oh.” Was it really that simple?

It’s easier to accept, now, than it was before, because Robin has been ruined more than could possibly be imagined, has had rats literally sticking their heads in his ass, has been an utter mess, and _yet_ – Slade doesn’t give him up. Slade _won’t_ give him up. 

How strange, that a thought that used to be so frightening is now comforting.

Robin is nothing without Slade, after all.

“Now,” Slade says, “Back down you go.”

At once Robin is utterly cold again, freezing. Again. Down into the hellhole where he can’t sleep, where tiny monsters feed on him and he drowns time and time again, where the darkness alone drives him mad as his thoughts pile up. Where he’s _alone._

He doesn’t realize he’s whining till Slade smacks the noise out of him. 

He shudders, trying to calm his breath. In the beginning… he had begged, pleaded, bargained with Slade to not put him back. He remembers the elation of leaving for the first time, only for it to crash and burn as Slade buried him back in again. He had tried docilely accepting it without objecting, calmly requesting that it be over. 

But Slade has granted him no end yet.

He feels so, so hopeless. 

And he’s here, begging again and crying, because he doesn't know what to do. “Please,” he begs, voice calling out with desperation. “Please just tell me what I’m doing _wrong.”_

Slade looks down on him, cold and immovable. “You’re mine, boy. I’ll do as I please with you. Whether it be leaving you here, or taking you away. For all that you’ve progressed,” Slade says, disappointment coloring his tone. “You have yet to learn your place.” 

And with that thought to haunt him, Slade lowers him back into the ground.

-/-

Eventually, Slade gets bored of the rats. Of the snakes, the roaches. Even the drowning. He’s getting a bit _impatient_ , really.

All of them are removed, but the shock features of the restraints are kept. Robin needs to be kept awake somehow. He adds a gag too, because he can. 

He keeps Robin there, in the dark, gagged, now completely alone, with nothing to distract him. In complete sensory deprivation. 

An idle thought crosses his mind. The next time Robin sees him, will he be grateful there are no more rats, or will he be too utterly mad to speak? 

If nothing else, Slade muses, it’ll be interesting to find out. 

-/-

It's quiet. Too quiet. No more chattering, no more squeaking. Only the huff of his breath, the beat of his heart, the thrum of his pulse, the blood rushing in his veins. 

In the quiet, deprived of any distraction, deprived of even the mercy of sleep, all Robin can do is _think._

_Useless, worthless boy. Can’t do anything right. That’s why you’re here. This is why Slade left you._

All he thinks of is Slade.

How to please Slade, how to be better, how to earn himself a ‘good boy’. How Slade will fuck him, when he’ll next see him, _if_ he’ll next see him.

_What use does Slade have for trash? What could he ever want to see_ you _for?_

It’s terrifying, how much power Slade has over him and how little Robin has to change anything.

Tied up as he is, Robin can’t even _move._

_You think you’re worth anything? That you matter to him? You’re nothing but a pathetic mewling worm, begging for attention. Why don’t you just cease to exist you USELESS–_

Sometimes, as the thoughts become too loud, his breaths speed up, coming faster and faster, till he chokes and can’t breathe _at all –_ gasping for air till he falls unconscious and is woken up by the shocks.

_You don’t have to do anything but stay awake, but you can’t even manage that, can you? Worthless whore._

He lays there, shivering. Waiting. 

Slade controls everything. Robin is nothing. Has nothing. He belongs, completely and utterly to _Slade._ To his master.

It’s Slade’s right, he realizes, to do whatever he pleases with him. Whether he leads him out, or leaves him here, Robin can do nothing about it because he _is_ nothing and _deserves_ nothing.

Occasionally checking up on him is more than Robin deserves.

He is Slade’s. Slade will do with him as he pleases, and Robin has no right to even think of dictating what that is. It’s time he _accepts_ that.

-/-

Truth be told, Slade wasn’t nearly as upset with the escape attempt as he should have been. Because, see, Robin could have run, could have left, and instead, he had just stopped. 

Had realized, by himself, that he was inherently _Slade’s._

Slade had gotten out of the restraints soon enough – he _designed_ them, after all – and quickly went to the security feeds only to realize that Robin hadn’t even managed to take a single damn step out of the complex. He had laughed out loud, then waited a couple hours waiting as his body recovered just watching Robin through the feeds. So desolate, so hopeless, so utterly _lost_ without his master. Like a leashed animal set free, all it knew was how to return to its master.

And when Robin had begged him to end him… if it weren’t for the fact that his dick still hadn’t regrown, Slade probably would have fucked him straight into the next day. The boy didn’t know how much his vulnerability and despair drew Slade to him like a shark to blood.

So no, Slade isn’t angry. If anything, Slade is _proud._ Pleased, with Robin’s progress. But as if he’d ever pass up a chance to punish the boy some more. He _is_ a sadist, after all. 

And Robin did rip his dick off. 

But Robin _didn’t_ leave, and he’s _pleased_ with just that much. 

_Such a bright boy…_

_Grant._ His thoughts darken as he is reminded of his firstborn. Grant was a reckless fool. Slade loved him and loves him still, but he was _reckless fool_ and now is six feet under. Grant was a fucking _idiot_ that ran from Slade Wilson only to run Deathstroke, never realizing that they were both the same. Never knowing that the man he spat on and the man whom he worshiped was was the same. Never realizing it was his _father_ fucking him. 

And Slade, too, had been a fool, too delighted by his son's admiration, even through a mask, and been too indulgent with him. He should have taken a firmer hand with the boy, keeping him closer and not hesitating to punish him if he tried to run. 

But Slade had already chased him off once and didn’t want to do it again because he loved him, and Grant was a _reckless idiot,_ and so he died. 

Trying to impress the man, if whose face he knew, he wouldn't have hesitated to shoot dead.

Grant left him, twice over, because Slade fucked up.

He fucked up things with Addie, too. She left him too, when she realized what he was up to, her fury and anger leaving a permanent scar on him. He hates her for leaving. 

And Joey… Joey was too softhearted, too like his mother and not enough like Slade, too kind and _weak._ It’s been a constant source of bafflement to Slade where Joey got the weakness from. Certainly not from him or Addie. 

Slade… cares for him, but he never loved him. He lacks the ability to deeply care for things that lack _strength._

But Robin… Robin, with Joey’s soft heart and Grant reckless drive and Addie’s fiery temperament and his own fae-like grace and captivating essence – Robin _tempts_ him. Robin is perfect, Slade will _make_ Robin perfect. 

Slade’s made sure, with the serum, that Robin won’t die so easily. Not to a bullet, not to his own recklessness, not even to his own desperation for death. And the failed escape attempt proved that Robin isn’t even capable of leaving on his own. And now, Slade thinks with excitement as he brings Robin up for the last time, Robin will obey him. Completely. No more of that pesky disobedience.

Robin surfaces. By now there are no restraints. Robin will lie there, pliant and unmoving unless Slade tells him to. Will stop breathing, if Slade suggests it. Will set himself on fire, will cease eating for weeks, will tear his heart out without hesitation for Slade. Will scream and beg and cry with a single order.

It’s taken months of training – months of rewriting Robin’s priorities, his hierarchy of needs, till it is beat into him that what Slade wants comes _first._ Everything else is superfluous.

Robin has been both broken and moulded, entirely to Slade’s whims. 

“Get up,” Slade orders. 

Robin follows, quiet and obedient, eyes cast downward. He stands, skin unblemished. Slade’s held back the rats, so there aren’t any marks. He looks like a porcelain doll. Beautiful, and ever so tempting as always.

It’s not like Slade has a reason to resist. He tells the boy to bend over, and then he’s fucking him. It’s a quick thing – Slade does have other plans. 

Robin’s breaths are tightly regulated, practiced, and Slade smirks. “Tighten up. Tell me how it feels.”

Slade has to bite back a groan as the already tight channel gains a vice grip on his cock, milking it for all it was worth. It’s glorious. The slide becomes easier with the slick of blood as Slade relentlessly presses on. 

“It.. hurts, master,” Robin says, breath hitching, voice strained. “It always feels like you’re ripping me apart, like I’m going to break into two. It burns, too, in the beginning, though it lessens with the blood.”

Slade lowers his mouth, teeth grazing the side of Robin’s neck. “And?” He breathes. 

“And your cock is so _big,_ master. I feel so full when it’s in me, and empty when it’s not. It… _completes_ me.”

Teeth pierce the side of Robin’s neck, Slade leaving a bruising hickey there. “Continue,” Slade orders, lapping up the blood there. He feels the boy swallow, and his walls convulse around his cock.

“You’re deep, master,” Robin says, quieter. “So deep. It hurts, but… I like it. I like being useful to you, being of service to you. In any way possible. Please use me however you like.” 

Slade comes.

“Thank you for using me, master,” Robin says.

Curious, Slade moves a hand to Robin’s crotch, and indeed, Robin is hard. He chuckled. He hadn’t even bothered to aim for the boy’s prostate. The child really did enjoy getting used, now. Such a well trained slut he has. 

He slips out, and admires the trail of come that comes out. “Don’t clean yourself up,” he orders as he tucks himself back in, not bothering to get Robin off.

“Yes, master.”

Slade points. “See that, boy?” 

There’s a child there. Black haired, and blue eyed. Young. Frightened. Tied up. Shaking. Slade picked him because he had looked a little like Robin, and well, if he was going to kidnap him anyway, why not pick a target Slade could enjoy _fucking?_ It was fun, enough that there’s still come staining the kid’s thighs. Not as good as Robin, of course, but good enough. 

But now, Slade doesn’t even bother looking at the kid. His eyes are only on Robin. No shame is in his eyes for having an audience. 

“Kill him. Make it hurt. Make it slow,” Slade orders simply. He hasn’t ever ordered Robin to kill, even back when he was still sending him out on missions. It’ll be… interesting to see where this leads.

“Yes, master.” Robin glides forward. 

The child begs, cries, does a lot of things, but it isn’t important. What’s important is Robin. He _doesn’t_ hesitate. His hands are _steady_ . His movements are _sure_ . Blood is spilt, again and again. The remnants of innocence, _destroyed_. 

Some time later, Robin approaches him, the first flicker of uncertainty visible on his face. “Did I do okay, master?” He asks, red still splattered on his chin. His blood stained fingers twitch. 

“You were very messy,” Slade says at last. “And you ended up killing him sooner than you expected, didn’t you?”

“Yes, master,” Robin answered, downcast.

Slade hums in response, placing a hand on top of Robin’s head, ruffling the boy’s hair. “It was alright for a first try. But you have to remember most people will be squishier than you, children especially. You’ll do better next time, won’t you?”

Robin’s eyes widen, and a tentative smile breaks out. “I– yes, master. Thank you.”

“Good boy,” Slade says, a soft chuckle escaping him. He tosses a packet into the boy’s hands. “You weren’t being the most well behaved child before, so I had to stop your training, but I think it’s about time you came back, isn’t it, Apprentice?”

Robin’s eyes shine with such gratefulness for a moment Slade wonders if he’s about to cry. “ _Thank you,_ Master.” He clutches the packet with his apprentice clothes tight to his chest. “I won’t disappoint you,” he vows, determination shining bright in his eyes.

“I know you won’t,” Slade replies, easily. He won’t _let_ Robin disappoint him.

Such a good, obedient child Robin has become. Well on his way to becoming Slade’s ideal. 

He pulls Robin close, embracing him, and lays a fond kiss on top of the boy's head. The child practically melts, leaning into his touch like he's starving for it. He strokes a finger down the boy's spine, bones starkly visible on his back. He considers for a moment, then proceeds to pick Robin up into his arms. Robin doesn't even question it, merely settling himself securely with his legs around Slade's waist, hands balanced on Slade's shoulder, with the clothes pressed between their chests.

Robin doesn't ask, but Slade answers his unspoken question anyway. "You're sleeping with me tonight, so you need to get cleaned up first." 

Slade catches the way Robin's eyes widen as he realizes what it means - no more being locked away in darkness, at least, not for tonight. It's not like intends to indulge the boy, but it has been a while since he fucked the boy on a bed. He intends to make up for lost time. 

"Thank you, Master," Robin repeats, eyes shining with gratitude. Perhaps a bit strange to thank the person who's going to fuck him till his hips break, but Slade always knew Robin was a bit of a slut.

Robin leans forward, as if asking permission, and Slade lays a hand over his head and pushes him close, allowing it. Fingers idly card through Robin's hair, gentle and soothing. Robin's relaxed, utterly, arms and legs wound around Slade, head pressed against Slade's shoulder, his breath small and warm on Slade's neck. It's peaceful, like a puzzle piece completed, things arranged order and exactly to perfection, like a key clicking open a lock - _whole._

Slade smiles in satisfaction.

Grant – his _first_ apprentice in a sense – is dead. Grant left him, Grant was a disobedient reckless brat. Slade _loved_ him. 

Robin, on the other hand… Robin _will_ survive, _will_ stay, and he _will_ obey his master. Slade _doesn’t_ love him. 

To love another implies a degree of separation, of self identity. Slade will make it so that Robin has none, that all he is Slade’s and nothing but Slade’s. It’s not love. Robin is simply _his._ Every inch, every breath, every word, every moment, is _his._ All Robin will think of, every last _thought,_ will be how to please Slade. Moulded from him, shaped by him, all he knows and will ever know is _Slade._

And if that is so… well, leaving him will not even be a thought Robin will be able to shape. Robin will be his, _forever_. Robin will be _perfect._

Yes. Perfection is within his grasp.

He might have fucked up in the past, but this time, Slade will do things _right._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp, it is DONE!!!  
> hope ya'll had fun ^.^  
> this is literally the longest thing I have published. THIS. This ridiculous torture porn. what have i done smh  
> but honestly, writing this was a blast and I have no regrets!
> 
> Thank you again, freaks, because this fic would not exist without you <3 you are an inspiration 
> 
> it's been a wild ride, thank ye all for the journey, and I hope to have more goody stuff for you all soon!!

**Author's Note:**

> I've been vaguely interested in writing vivisection ever since I was in the Danny Phantom phandom, but never quite had the guts. I tried twice - one got turned into a crackfic, the other's stalled after the first few paragraphs. But anyway, recently I got back inspired, so y'all get this instead.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed it.
> 
> The fact that the first Sladin thing that I post is this monstrosity is something I don't know what to do with. Please validate me with kudos and comments.
> 
> p.s. One day, I will go back and go through all this to give it the editing it sorely needs. Today is not that day.


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